Four ways to get good people to run for office
Published in Rome Magazine
3 days ago (Medium.com)
Back in the 1930s, it wasn’t uncommon to enter somebody’s house and see a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt on the wall. This made sense at the time. He was a very popular politician, with approval ratings that sometimes topped 80%. But it was more than that — in addition to guiding the country through the hard times of depression and war, Roosevelt was widely respected as a leader and a human being. He became a kind of father figure to the nation.
Can you imagine something like that happening today?
It feels like it’s been a long time since we’ve had a leader who has been as widely admired as FDR. In some ways, that’s OK. Political hagiography kind of gives me the creeps. On the other hand, we may have swung too far in the opposite direction as a country.
Though Americans get to choose our leaders, we seem to despise them. Two-thirds of Americans think that “most politicians are corrupt.” About the same percentage believes that politicians as a category are “somewhat immoral” or “very immoral;” in fact, Americans find politicians to be more immoral than pornography actresses. Ninety percent of Americans don’t want their children to become politicians.
It’s not hard to see why we have such a low opinion of our leaders. Sometimes I think Americans are too cynical about our politicians — there are a lot of good people, trying their best — but it’s undeniable that our system attracts too many mediocrities, idiots, crooks, and narcissists. Too many of them don’t get much done, are in thrall to moneyed interests, and are dishonest.
Think for a minute about what it must be like to run for president. What sort of person would want to subject themselves and their families to years of invasive scrutiny, to be the butt of endless jokes and lies, and to be hated by half the country? And then, if all goes well, to take on one of the most stressful and thankless jobs on the planet? Unsurprisingly, many of the people who run for such offices are utter narcissists, people who are so obsessed with power that they’re willing to upend every aspect of their lives and sell every bit of their soul to get it.
So how can we get smarter, wiser, more honest people to run for office? Let’s explore four possible solutions.
Pay politicians more
The most common suggestion for improving the quality of our politicians is a classically capitalist one: we should pay them more.
Politicians aren’t exactly starving, but they don’t make a lot of money compared to other accomplished professionals. Pay for state legislators is all over the place — in South Carolina and Rhode Island, they’re paid less than $20,000 per year; in Wisconsin $55,000; in Ohio, $68,000; in Pennsylvania, $95,000; and in California, $120,000. In many states, being a member of the state house or senate is a part-time job, and legislators have to balance their civic duties with an ordinary career (my local state rep has a day job as a nurse).
Even at the federal level — ostensibly the place where our most skilled and dedicated public servants should be — pay is just OK. Members of the House and Senate make $174,000 per year — again, a very nice salary, but about half of what a midwestern gastroenterologist would make. Members of Congress also have significant personal expenses associated with their jobs, as they have to travel back and forth to Washington from their home states and maintain residences in both locations. If you think your raises have been paltry, try being a Congressperson: Congress hasn’t raised its pay since 2009 (it’s actually scheduled to receive a cost-of-living increase each year, but it usually performatively blocks that raise).
If we paid politicians more money, we might attract better-educated, more qualified people to run for office, especially if they have established lucrative careers that they would have to abandon for public service. It might also keep politicians away from the “revolving door” between the public and private sectors. If legislators didn’t have one eye on getting a high-paying gig as “compensation” once they’ve left public service, we might see fewer ethical conflicts, too.
Will this actually work? The evidence is mixed. There’s been some research that seems to show that better pay for politicians yields better outcomes, although a study in the European Union indicated that higher pay did not result in better-educated members of parliament.
Leave politicians alone
Pay is, of course, only one of the conditions of work. A lot of people take jobs that pay them less as long as they get to experience a better quality of life. Is being a politician… enjoyable?
Politics isn’t for everybody, and it never will be. People who are uncomfortable with strangers, who hate public speaking, or who are very sensitive to criticism and disagreement should probably not sign up. But it seems that even some of the most driven, extroverted, thick-skinned people get driven from politics.
American politicians find themselves in a weird position. On the one hand, high political office is one of the most prestigious stations in American life. But, at the same time, many politicians are despised and dragged through the mud. Those who reach the highest rungs of the political ladder find that every part of their life, and their family’s lives, is under a microscope. Candidates’ friendships, complicated family relationships, business histories, and marital problems all end up on public display, often in a way that exaggerates or misrepresents the truth.
What person in their right mind would choose a profession in which their youthful foibles or painful personal secrets could easily become fodder for memes and mockery?
Maybe we would get better politicians if the media stayed out of their personal lives. This was the way things used to be, of course — many reporters knew about the extramarital affairs of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, but they didn’t report on them.
The problem with this solution is that it would create an awfully tricky line for the media to walk. Is an extramarital affair a sign that someone is unfit for office? How about decades-old accusations of sexual assault, as happened with Brett Kavanaugh? What about corrupt-seeming friendships with billionaires, ala Clarence Thomas? Or a history of depression, which sank Thomas Eagleton’s Vice-Presidential candidacy in 1972? Past drug use, as in the case of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama? Or family members engaged in sketchy activities (Roger Clinton, Billy Carter, Hunter Biden)?
Keep them accountable
Maybe we should hold our politicians more accountable.
The media scandal is our main tool for keeping politicians honest. There are two problems with media scandals. First, the media doesn’t always focus on the right things. They often get caught up with candidates’ personal foibles or awkward but meaningless gaffes. Second, media scandals only work as an enforcement mechanism if candidates are cowed by them. If politicians are shameless — see: Trump, Donald or Santos, George — they cease to matter much.
In our system, the higher you climb on the political ladder, the fewer ethical rules you have to follow. Supreme Court justices, for example, enforce their own ethics rules, which means that they are free of any scrutiny. Presidents, likewise, don’t have to follow many of the ethics rules that apply to Congress and the cabinet. Sure, there’s the nuclear option of impeachment, but that seems unlikely to be an effective deterrent in our polarized climate.
The political scientist Brian Klaas suggests an independent, nonpartisan office of ethical accountability that has the power to investigate and punish anyone in the government, no matter how powerful. This would work like an internal-affairs office in a police department, keeping all politicians honest.
Incentivize workhorses, not showhorses
A final suggestion is that we might want to create a political system that attracts doers rather than performers.
American politics, especially at the most visible levels, doesn’t get much done. Washington seems to be a never-ending, gridlocked food fight. Half the time, they can’t even agree to keep the government open, never mind proactively solving the country’s problems.
Many former members of Congress have left, at least in part, because of the pointlessness of their jobs. Tom Coburn, a Senator from Oklahoma, said, “That’s why I left. You couldn’t do anything anymore.” Ben Sasse, from Nebraska, complained that “The legislature is impotent. The legislature is weak.”
There are lots of reasons for this gridlock — partisanship, gerrymandering, and the filibuster, to start. There’s almost no compromise anymore; the two parties have retreated to their corners and seem more interested in attacking each other than solving the country’s problems.
This means that the way to become a prominent politician is to spend your time getting media attention rather than crafting legislation. Rising stars in Congress often focus more on “comms” than legislation. Better to be a showhorse, doing cable news hits and posting viral tweets, than a workhorse, toiling away on legislation that will never, ever get passed.
If you were somebody who actually wanted to change the world for the better, would running for Congress even make sense? Couldn’t you do more good by starting a business or working in the nonprofit sector?
Maybe, in order to attract better politicians, we need to build a political system in which progress is actually possible along with a political culture that rewards action rather than performance.
My concerns are not exactly new. In 1955, Joseph Clark, the Mayor of Philadelphia, wrote an article in the Atlantic called “Wanted: Better Politicians.”
In it, he makes some of the same proposals we see today — pay politicians more, give politicians the “presumption of integrity.” He concludes the article by saying:
Government by amateurs, semi pros, and minor leaguers will not meet the challenge of our times. We must change our attitude toward the profession, increase its material and spiritual rewards, and offer the same minimum security to its practitioners as is present in competing occupations.
Above all, we must realize that it takes great competence to run a country which, in spite of itself, has succeeded to world leadership in a time of deadly peril.
Like Clark, I understand that we’ve managed to muddle and bumble our way through American history with an often-subpar collection of leaders. But I’d like to enter the next phase of history with a better set of leaders, if at all possible.