Another Perspective

Have You No Soul?

The Duality of the public servant: an exhaustive study of what it means to lead by following. Except more interesting than that sounds.

Politics are kind of weird. There's supposedly this underlying assumption that politicians are the servants of the voting populace. I mean, that's what they're called, public servants. But they are also supposed to be leaders. How does someone pull off the task of being both a servant and a leader? That's kind of screwed up. You've got this class of people who are supposed to be servile, but then turn around and be commanding. The strange thing is, that's what they do. They feel your pain, solicit the will of the people, blah, blah, blah, and then they cram a new law down the populace's throat. That's really kind of a multiple personality disorder when you think about it. The general public and media don't really help them either. We say that we want politicians to listen to our concerns, hold all of these public meetings, keep the power in individuals hands, and then we frequently chastise them for lack of leadership when they don't make decisive decisions (although an indecisive decision would seem to be an oxymoron).

The really strange thing is that I don't know if I would want it any other way. We could, for instance, have people apply for the position of leader, elect them, and then just shut up and let them be leaders. Just say, "Okay, this is your job, you do it and we'll do a performance review in 4 years. In the mean time, we'll just be quiet and go along doing our jobs and let you lead." I really don't think that people are capable of that and I don't think it's such a hot idea anyway. Quite frankly, I don't trust people to be good leaders. The problem is that leaders are people, and I know too many people to trust people. So we constantly feel the need to be back-seat politicians, so to speak. We form lobbies and watchdog groups to monitor and influence our elected leaders. We solicit funding for our pet projects and call it pork-barrel politics when anyone else does it. Pundits near and far practice the fine art of second-guessing our elected leaders. But all of those things that we love to hate about politics--the scheming, the watered-down policy for the masses, the campaign contributions, the lobbying--these are all things which have come about for a good reason: we don't really trust politicians and politicians don't trust us.

Imagine that you are going to run for a political office (even a local office or the ASUO). There is some subtle assumption that the voting populace wants a candidate to be straightforward, honest, plainspoken, and completely forthright in the expression of their views. Now, be honest, how many of you are completely forthright in your opinions even with your friends? How many people don't practice self-censorship of one sort or another? Not lying, but perhaps the sin of omission or the softer wording of an opinion? This goes on all the time even among friends who share predominantly the same views and have a strong bond that would transcend a few (impolitic) differences. Now go back to imagining that you supposedly want to represent a few thousand people (sort of a ridiculous idea, In my humble opinion) and then what sort of self-censorship might you practice? Well, no wonder we don't trust politicians! We really don't have any reason to. We usually don't know them well and it would be difficult to naively believe the veracity of their statements about their beliefs. Given the propensity to soften the edges of opinions, deliver platitudes instead of policy, and pander to the lowest common denominator, I am sometimes tempted to vilify the entire subclass of the human race known as politicians. In reality, however, they should hold as much contempt of us as we do of them.

Let us assume the benign image of a politician, those who serve out of care for the public good. Many readers at this point may scoff, but I do believe that the above characterization is valid for a large majority of our elected representatives. Many of the people who serve could achieve positions of power and leadership with better pay in the private sector. They would also have to put up with less crap from voters. Even at the level of our own ASUO, I believe that our candidates are motivated by a desire to serve. The jobs are not particularly glamorous, fun, easy or monetarily rewarding. The sickos who run get this weird kick out of feeling like they are "contributing something". And in a way, they are contributing something. I may disagree with every decision a politician makes, not like the person as a human being, and work actively to get anyone else into their position, but I must still acknowledge that they were willing to make the sacrifices required to get elected and help the people in the way that they thought best and I wasn't. It's not that I don't have opinions on the best way to serve the populace. I'm just not willing to put out the effort, to put myself on the line, in order to try to get elected so I can do something about it. The same thing goes for pretty much everyone else. I can't think of many (actually, any) people I know who don't have opinions about how politics or government should be changed. Maybe it's campus, city, county, state, national, or international politics, but most people have at least some opinions on how things should be done. Truth is that very few actually do anything to try and promote their convictions. And fewer still try and put themselves in positions of responsibility where they are supposed to represent diverse opinions outside their own.

No wonder political institutions seem suspicious. Being a politician is like walking around with a big sign on your back that says "Kick Me." They represent a few thousand or million people who were not willing to try for the job, but feel it is their divine right to offer opinions on how the job should be done. It's like being half-afloat in a sea of consultants.

So it seems like we've got this fucked up situation where the populace doesn't trust the politicians and the politicians don't trust the populace. We end up with all of these checks and balances in government, all of this lobbying, all of these competing campaign donations and letter writing that seem to be designed to bring the pace of change to a crawl. A horrible situation in many people's eyes. But I think things are really meant to be this way. I think we have more to fear from an efficient government than a bureaucracy mired in, well, bureaucracy. I fear effective politicians. I fear those who can "work the machine." Bureaucracy is designed to have processes, processes that make sure that only the most stridently, popularly-supported policies get through. I admit that it is a bastion of frustration that I have often flung myself against to no avail, but that is really its purpose.

I wish enlightenment would suddenly spread itself across the land and that people would see the error of their ways and suddenly join the entrenched camp of my opinion. If that was the case, however, we wouldn't need lobbying and debates and such. Enlightenment, while desirable, is not a very practical solution. Instead we have a system where competing enlightenments vie for establishment as the rule of the land. If it was too easy for a point of view to change (or become entrenched) then we would see no peace. I disagree with a fair number of the current entrenched opinions of our political establishments, but they only got there through broad consensus. If we want to achieve change in those opinions, we must also achieve broad consensus.

In the end, what I'm trying to get across is that people may distrust politicians and politicians may distrust the people, but I think that is really the way things should be. So when you are on either side of the fence (politician or elector) remember that both sides of the game are playing a role vital to a healthy republic. Both a direct democracy and a dictatorship are scary thoughts for a system the size of ours, and while our current republic may seem ineffectual and resistant to change, it is all part of the balance of power.

Judah McAuley, a dude with the stuff, is a featured columnist for the Oregon Commentator