The outsized value of political office
When we keep people in power, we devalue our own importance
P.J. O'Rourke used to say that holding office should be like jury duty: the notice that you’ve been elected to office should arrive in the mail, and the first words from your mouth should be, “well shit.” The recipient should immediately wonder how to get out of it, and if not, hope upon hope that the job will end quickly.
In my experience, the very best holders of public office don’t really want the job. Being in an elected office is the ultimate sacrifice, an inconvenience. They want to get back to whatever it was they were doing before they became a senator or representative or mayor or commissioner, and do so as quickly as possible.
But even the best people, if they stay too long, almost without exception, can’t escape the reality that their office has value, and then the office becomes a trap. They get used to the title and the benefits of the position. They love seeing their name in the press. They love being invited to speak on podcasts and give speeches to crowds. They enjoy posing for photos with other “important” people and going to the special places that regular people can’t go.
Lobbyists and other “political insiders” also prize their own proximity to power, and are reticent to give it up or say or do anything that might harm their own stature in the theater of politics.
Political office is a prize, a thing of infinite value, and so therefore infinite money is spent on it.
Why does political office hold such value? Because there is no limit to what it can buy, especially when money and power are near unlimited. And minus any kind of limitation on when a person’s tenure in office is forced to conclude, it’s a prize that can remain for as long as a person is able to draw breath.
Moreover, the American political system has become set up in such a way that lengthy tenure is actually considered a plus. More tenure means greater likelihood of being able to ascend to even higher levels of political prominence … speaker, pro tempore, committee chairman, and so on. And then those people often crave more, a more lucrative position, more power, with even greater adoration of the masses.
I’m 53 years old, and there are people in Congress and in state legislatures who have been in elective office longer than I have been alive, and as such, they’ve become celebrated mainly for their ability to stay in the job.
More worrisome, this system is one in which we give these people our own power, await their decisions on our own wellbeing. We are then beset with an unnatural interest in helping them retain their positions so they can continue to make decisions on our behalf. We become dependent on their votes, cling to their every word, every action. We watch to see if the things we want are funded, if the taxes will be raised, if the tariffs will be lowered, if the troops are to be sent to war, and so on.
Through politics, we have created a false reality in which certain people have more value than others, and things with no value have tremendous value. In reality, no man or woman is greater than any other. No position is more meaningful than any other.
Never be a supplicant or a slave to anyone for any reason, real or imagined.
If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.— Chapter 3, Tao Te Ching, translation by Stephen Miller