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.

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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 |