America 2016: The Dead-end of “Career Politicians”

“Career Politicians Are Killing America”

Why is America’s electorate, in the 2016 Presidential primaries and election, apparently going to face a choice only among candidates who are lifelong specialists in seeking political power? Of course, it is early to reach that conclusion; I generalize based upon those individuals who have announced their candidacy.

There is a common term for this phenomenon: “career politician.” Here are a few headlines out of hundreds on the topic: “Career Politicians on the Rise: How to Stem the Tide…”; “Career Politicians Are Just What We Need…”; “Career Politicians Are Killing America…”; and “U.S. Term Limits: Citizen Legislators not Career Politicians…”.

The power of the incumbent to get media coverage, do favors for big donors, send repeated mailings to constituents, and use the staff for campaigning make him almost unassailable.

The debate, almost always, is about term limits for the U.S. House and Senate, an idea about three-fourths of the electorate (82 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of Democrats in one poll) approves, but gets nowhere. Job security in Congress makes unions look heartless: For the past half century, the rate of re-election to the House never has been below 85 percent, most often over 90 percent. The power of the incumbent to get media coverage, do favors for big donors, send repeated mailings to constituents, and use the staff for campaigning make him almost unassailable.

In fact, candidates for office can win votes by pledging to stand up for term limits. There was a movement, awhile back, to “take the pledge” to voluntarily limit time in office, if elected. Problem is, out of 39 incoming freshmen Representatives in 1994 who took the pledge, more than one third broke it, once in office. One commentator pointed out the irony: Only politicians who kept their promises left office.

Addressing the issue of the “career politician,” National Review commented commented briefly on retirement of C.W. “Bill” Young of Florida at age 82, in 2013, who had entered politics at age 26:

“Politico credited him with having ‘broad power over military spending’ during his many years as chairman of the defense subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, a.k.a ‘the House favor factory.’”

Upon retiring, Congressman Young said he would support his wife, Beverly, or his son, Bill II, to succeed him in office.

If this makes you uncomfortable, as it does me, perhaps you have been influenced by the most powerful political ideology in our history:  the ideal of “Jeffersonian democracy.” The core of the Jeffersonian ideal is that no political elite should govern America, permanently in power. In Jefferson’s day that meant America should have not aristocracy like the British House of Lords. It also meant, for Jefferson, that America should not be governed by an economic “elite” of bankers and manufacturers. The true “republicans” were the farmers, the planters, and “plain folk.”

From this comes the  motto, “Citizen legislators; not career politicians” of U.S. Term Limits, a Fairfax, VA, organization, which has been advocating term limits for more than 20 years. Its online petition seeks one million signatures supporting a Constitutional amendment to set term limits.

Today, the Jeffersonian vision is not about farmers versus bankers, or planters versus manufacturers; but the essence remains—neither a political class nor economic power should rule the republic. This is not to say there is an equivalence between political power (the power of law, initiation of force) and economic power (the power of production, offering incentives). But today, government, by means of regulation, taxing or tax breaks, penalties or subsidies—all the ways that “crony capitalism” marries the power of politicians to the interests of businessmen—can affect the success, even survival, of virtually any enterprise or entire industry. In the mixed economy, or crony capitalism, the line between economic power and political power blurs. America’s leading companies, especially on Wall Street, make handsome contributions to both Democratic and Republican candidates because they cannot afford to have an important politician in office to whom they do not have “access.”

Thus, not by the nature of capitalism, which separates politics from economics just as the U.S. Constitution separates politics from religion—and for the same reasons—but because what we have today is “crony capitalism,” we again see the rationale of the Jeffersonian republican vision that opposes both the political elite and the “money” elite.

Americans face a choice among “career politicians,” and, behind them, ready “donors” of the crony capitalist economy placing their early bets on future sources of political protection or favors.

So far, in the lead up to the 2016 election for President, Americans face a choice among “career politicians,” and, behind them, ready “donors” of the crony capitalist economy placing their early bets on future sources of political protection or favors.

This by no means implies that the problem is new. President Barack Obama, when he ends his second term, in 2016, will have been a politician throughout his career. From graduation from Harvard Law School, to radical-leftist “community organizer” in Chicago, to the Illinois State Senate (teaching at the University of Chicago simultaneously), to the U.S. Senate, when he cut short his first term to run successfully for President, he has done nothing but seek and exercise ever-greater political power.

His predecessor, George W. Bush, graduating from Yale Law then Harvard Business School in 1975, ran for the House of Representatives two years later, but was defeated. He then “worked in the oil business,” a family matter, and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball club; but, in 1994, became governor of Texas, and, in 2000, President of the United States. Outside of politics, he had been in the family business for a few years, waiting for his next run for office, and wealthy friends set him up as co-owner of the Texas Rangers. Along the way, it helped immeasurably that his father had been both vice president and president before him.

Today, April 13, two potential candidates for the 2016 Presidential nomination dominated the news.

Hillary Clinton, wife of Arkansas governor William Clinton, wife of President Clinton, former senator from New York, former Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, declared her candidacy on April 12 and was headed for Iowa to campaign for the Democratic nomination in that earliest pivotal state. If nominated and elected, she will become President of the United States at 68, the second oldest individual (after Ronald Reagan) ever to become President. She has had no career (apart from “homemaking”) except the quest for ever-greater political power.

And today, the junior Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, 44, declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President. Senator Rubio, after law school, became a city commissioner in West Miami, was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, and then ran successfully for the U.S. Senate in 2009. He has done nothing, after his education, but seek ever greater political power.

Jeb Bush? He spent five years in Florida real-estate development, taking time off to campaign in his father’s successful run for President. Since 1986, it has been all political office and now he deems himself ready to become President of the United States like his father and his older brother.

Rand Paul, Senator from Kentucky, born into a legendary political family (his father made a career of running for President), actually practiced ophthalmology for almost 18 years before becoming a U.S. Senator in 2011, and now, four years into his term, has announced his candidacy for President. His cannot be called a political career; indeed, his total time in any elective office has been four years—and he believes himself ready for the top spot. Along the way, he obtained (and helped to fund) a change in Kentucky law to enable him to run for President without giving up his Senate seat.

Ted Cruz, junior Senator from Texas, held several federal appointive offices before he was policy advisor to the Bush campaign in 2000. Then, he served as solicitor general of Texas until he became a U.S, Senator in 2012. After less than three years in that office, he has announced for the Republican Party candidacy for U.S. President. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that election to the U.S. Senate is now a quick stepping stone to candidacy for President (Obama, Rubio, Paul, and Cruz).

The “job” or career step that they seek is the most powerful political office in the world. In every era, it has been demanding, but. today, the United States faces what most objective observers call an economic crisis: the largest budget deficit in its history, legally locked-in “entitlements” that cannot be funded much longer but have no chance of repeal; interest on its debt which, when the Federal Reserve finally must allow short-term interest rates to rise above zero, will eat up the whole discretionary portion national budget; and an economy still faltering seven years after the once-in-a-century financial panic and stock market crash.

Abroad, the United States faces a historic resurgence of the conflict between Muslim sects across the Middle East, a region vital to America’s oil-driven economy and now racing to “go nuclear”; a resurgence of Russian expansionism that confronts America again with a heavily nuclear-armed opponent on the borders of Western Europe; and an emerging super-power in Asia as China takes advantage of America’s economic stagnation and abuse of its privilege as the keeper of the world’s “reserve currency” to supplant American economic leadership—and then political leadership—in the world.

It is a time for leadership on a par with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. It is a moment for men of lifelong achievement—one thinks of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a towering military commander tested and validated in leadership of the D-Day invasion—to seek the highest office to steer the nation through crisis.

The time cries out for conviction that ideas will determine the country’s future. Ronald Reagan, a life-long actor, executive of the Screen Actors Guild, and spokesman for General Electric, who moved across the political spectrum from communism to capitalism, and spent decades as a private citizen promulgating his creed of free markets in every forum open to him, took political office at 53 on a platform of limiting government and became governor of California, serving out two full terms. Twice he sought the Republican Presidential nomination and was defeated. Then, in 1980, succeeded, becoming Republican nominee and triumphing over President Jimmy Carter. He entered office with an urgent vision and conviction about where America must go.

These have not been the only effective U.S. Presidents since the end of WWII. But they have been the two presidents not “career politicians,” the two Presidents coming to office from successful careers outside of politics, and the only ones elected on explicit platforms of reducing the size and power of government. Both are widely acknowledged to have left the country stronger economically and in a stronger position abroad.

Both men, after other careers before political office, were older when taking office:  Eisenhower at 62 and Reagan at 69, the oldest first-time president ever. (The precedents are not reassuring for Hillary Clinton, who, if she wins the election, will enter office only a year younger than was Reagan. Reagan developed undiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease while in office. Eisenhower had a heart attack three years into his first term.)

In the “final analysis,” as writers boldly declared, there is no formula in terms of age, time in office, or experience in other careers for identifying the candidates America desperately needs. Barry Goldwater, winning the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, first entered the Senate in 1952, at age 43, after serving in the Phoenix city council, running the family business, and having an extraordinary career as a pilot in WWII. He may be considered a “career politician, but one driven by ideology—to reduce the size of government, restore Constitutional limits, and stop merely “containing” Soviet expansionism. Defeated in his run for President in 1964, he returned to the Senate for another 23 years.

It is an easy “call” to support term limits. The chief argument against them is that we need a core of highly experienced, well-connected deal-makers to get things done in Congress. But the complexity with which these “old hands” must cope results from a view of government as planner and regulator of the U.S. economy, protector against economic “injustice” in the name of egalitarianism, defender of the global environment, regulator of new technology, and dispenser of “welfare” funds for insatiable “needs” presented by constituents. The mere reminder that no government can succeed in this role, and that the U.S. Constitution gives government no such powers, refutes the chief argument against term limits.

In favor of term limits are well-known arguments that they promote the “seniority” system as against merit; that long terms mean ever-increasing power to dispense more funds and favors; that lobbyists “invest” in long-term office holders; and that term-limited politicians might spend less time and effort of themselves and staff on re-election.

We return to a simple question: Why does an individual seek political office? Why set his or her sights on political power? The “bad” reasons are legion: enjoyment of wielding power, enjoyment of prestige and publicity; enjoyment of merely appearing and watching everyone rush to do ones bidding. Such reasons are bad because they fuel only efforts to increase the power of government and political office. These motivations are consistent with the ideologies of the mixed-economy-welfare state, socialism in all its forms, dictatorship, and totalitarianism. And so, as the career politician has become the norm in America, the size, expense, and power of government has increased relentlessly.

The other reason to seek political office is desire to change government, to see one’s vision of how we are governed made real. I view this as the only legitimate reason for seeking political office.

The other reason to seek political office is desire to change government, to see one’s vision of how we are governed made real. I view this as the only legitimate reason for seeking political office and the test of any proposed candidate. But don’t candidates who seek office with a passion to use government to control more and more areas of our lives, and candidates who seek office with a passion to expand the sphere of individual choice and freedom by curtailing government power, both satisfy my criterion for “legitimate” office seeking?

Yes, they do, provided both are genuine, honest advocates of their position. As long as their goal is to articulate to the electorate a vision of government and not to seek the false ego gratification of office.

I will stake my political freedom on the belief that if a candidate states clearly and consistently that he wishes to expand government power, to limit individual freedom for some “larger good,” that my fellow Americans will defeat him at the polls. And that if he runs for office against a candidate explicitly committed to limiting government to expand the sphere of freedom, that candidate will win.

The essential problem of our politics, perhaps politics in every era, is that no candidate ever articulates honestly his intention to limit freedom. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who enlarged the role of government more than any president in modern times, campaigned against Herbert Hoover as insufficiently “laissez faire.” But the candidate who forthrightly articulated his vision for a socialist America, George McGovern, lost the 1968 election in an unprecedented landslide to Richard Nixon. No advocate of statism, the growth of government power at the expense of individual freedom, has since made that mistake. In 2012, Ron Paul, a candidate for the Republican nomination, and Gary Johnson, the candidate for Libertarian Party, openly articulated the ending of environmental subsidies and central banking (among other things), and were strong advocates of “term limits.” They lost.

The field of career politicians Americans face in 2016 indicates that we have made politics a “profession.” Increasingly, it is a profession that trades in the currency of mere power: a Jeb Bush, a Hillary Clinton, a Rand Paul all inherit the family fortune of political name—recognition and connections.

Is it ironic—or inevitable—that as America’s government crisis—fiscal, regulatory, imperialist (in chronic wars), invasive of privacy—has become more profound, its process of fostering and identifying leadership has become more superficial?

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2. Trump is the GOP’s Frankenstein. And the Aftermath is Predictable
3. Dull and Deadly

   

About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway contributes to Savvy Street on political economy, science, and trends in fiction, film, and culture. Walter Donway’s most recent book is Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office (Romantic Revolution Books: New York, September 2017). His Amazon profile can be found here