Politicians

Who wants to make a career as a politician? What skills do they have? What motivates them? Who wants to spend decades in an office building with meeting rooms? Suppose you are in Montana or Idaho and are public minded, and here is where you go, or even a more plain office block building built in the 1900s. There the passionate Republicans can debate for days and days about acceptable ways to execute criminals or perform abortions. Or to ban the clinics in some technical manner, making the abortions more or less impractical. The abortion is only a bus ride to Seattle and back, but that itself is mostly impossible.

If I had the inclination to go into politics, I would tackle some practical matter for one or two terms, such as trash, and be done with it. Even there, you get people on the right or left to oppose NEW IDEAS, sometimes together.

The people out there is sparsely populated states have the same tasks as in the populated East. Police, city utilities, highway patrol, flooding and all the practical matters of life. The Kansans had to finally deal with their penny pinching Republicans and collect funds to take care of mounting problems. I admit that when Republicans are forced to deal with a practical problem, they can do it. I also admit that Democrats can also solve those same problems, but perhaps with more spending and debt. They want to fix it RIGHT, for the long term. The Republicans, however, are  more likely to be buddies with the contractors and play golf with them.

In middle of the road states you get the pendulum effect. The right merely has to cut taxes and spending for as long as possible. They never have to solve problems that cost money. They have to do things  they were voted to do: stop abortion, stop gay marriages, stop liberals. This costs nothing! Well, actually costs a lot, in the form of social problems and crime that follows. But the voters do  not see the connection.

Then in the middle of the road states the Democrats take over for 4-8 years and fix the stuff the Republicans refused to fix.

As an effective use of taxed money, politics is not the solution that spends the least money. They rarely use trained professionals, such as city managers who actually do know how to do public spending. Those type of managers do not get involved in social programs, only remotely, such as providing housing.

But there are forward thinkers, and eager young people launch into a career to push medical marijuana or wind power or some other thing. I guess there is a place for them. In many ways a dictatorial system such as China is better equipped to deal with practical problems: roads, infrastructure, health care, dams, waterways, harbors, airports etc etc. They also have allowed capitalism to enter in the form of manufacturing. This makes us dependent on them and war less likely.

I don't need to think about being a politician. I could only be and adviser. Where I live, they would not vote for an outsider and an atheist.