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Why we look on them from above? Occasionally I find myself defending politicians, not so much on a particular issue but generally, as a profession: I believe they are often downgraded unsubstantially. Politics is the societal manage-ment, the job which has to be done, i.e. somebody has to do it. Worse, somebody among us (and you know what we are like!). Of course you have a right to criticize a sloppy politi-cian like you do on sloppy plumber or sloppy car-mechanic. However, with politicians you do it more vehemently, you do it with more passion. Why? Well, deeply in yourself you believe that, politics related, you are at least as good as the buddy you criticize (and you don’t have the same attitude when your car brakes, do you?). Most of them do their best. And, if their best is not good enough, it’s our responsibility: remember, we elected them.

Why they really run (excerpts from Michael Kinsley's essay in Time, Jan. 14, 2008)

HINT: it’s not because they’re humble - or desperate to reform health care

There are presidential candidates for virtually every taste yet citizens find the menu inadequate. They tell pollsters they are discontented with the selection and generally sick of politics and politicians. In part, they are just being polite. The notion that people hate politics and that politicians are all phonies is so ingrained that to tell a pollster that, yeah, politicians are OK, and the system is not so bad would almost be a violation of democratic etiquette.

Yet voters are also right to feel that something is phony about democratic politics and that it’s getting worse. Even a candidate who agrees with you on all important issues and always has - no dreaded flip-flops - is forced by the conven-tions of politics to be disingenuous about at least one core issue: why he or she is running.

Ladies and gentlemen, they are running because are ambitious. No, really, they are. You probably suspected as much. And yet you would abandon any candidate who dared to admit this, or at least they all believe that you would. We all are told at our high school graduation to be ambitious, then for the rest of our lives it becomes a shameful secret. Ambition can take many forms ... but the purest form of ambition is political ambition, because it represents a desire to rule over other people.

What motivates most politicians, especially those running for President, is closer to your classic will-to-power than to a deep desire to reform the health-care system. Alpha males are alpha males (and alpha females, ditto): it’s true among apes, and it’s true among humans. This doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them people. It also doesn’t make democracy a farce; there will always be more than enough alpha types to go around, and our right to choose among them still gives us plenty of leverage about the kind of society we live on. But because ambition can never be naked in a political campaign, it must be clothed in deceit. And that does make a farce of lot of what goes on in our democracy.

On the left: Lada's cat Milla, when polled of mice democracy.

Photo by Lada A Adamić