I'm a Politician, And I'm Here To Help You

There are certain phrases that evoke a visceral reaction. One of them is "Fire!" in the middle of the night. Another is "We think you need new brakes", after you've brought your car in for an oil change and asked that they look into the question of why the brakes are squealing when applied at slow speed. You don't expect them to say that they need to be replaced -- a light featherdusting, perhaps a touch of cosmetic paint, at most -- and you certainly don't expect them to cost what they do. I assume they're being installed by Nobel Prize winners, using microwaldo technology, in a clean room environment, and that the brakes themselves are made of a composite of jewels and, most expensive and rarest, a professional politician's ethics.

I have not trusted professional politicians for quite some time. By PP I really mean 'well known national politicians'. I trust the local people (who for all I know are plundering the Sewer Fund so that they can buy mink curtains for their bathroom, a la Dennis Kozlowski), and I assume that not-well- known players on the national political scene, like the senior senator from North Dakota, or the junior senator from Nevada, or the entire Congressional slate from Rhode Island -- I assume all of them are doing a decent job. Its because I have no reason to think otherwise. But nationally known politicians -- ah, theres another story.

Though I try not to let myself get too influenced by what the press says -- sometimes they get inflamed at the dammedest things -- it does seem that in many cases these well-known politicians have elevated themselves into a Marie Antoinette-like aloofness where they truly do believe themselves to be different from and better than the mass of people, from which they offer comments about the teeming hoi polloi. Those politicians, I don't trust. I don't know of any nationally known politicians who seem to be in it for the common good. They all seem to be in it for their own good, for their party's good, for their lobbyists good, for their state's good, and then, if there's any left, for my good. Or maybe another helping of their own good, and then mine.

I accept that part of the reason that politicians seem to be grasping all of the time is that they are -- they're continually looking for funding, and this not being the perfect world (ever since Danny Kaye and Mr. Rogers died, a lot of the magic has gone away, or revealed itself to be dried glitter paint and sweat), the people with the money are unwilling to give it up without a substantial quid pro quo. And the more quid that they give up, the more quo that they want. A politician years ago (Everett Dirksen, I think, back when we thought guys like him were just good old boys and not the serious dealers in power and perks that they in fact were) was quoted as saying "A million here, a million there, pretty soon you're talking real money." Thats the league these guys deal in, and I suppose they become pretty coarsened to what they have to do to get that money pretty quickly. We haven't sent Mr. Smith to Washington in quite some time.

And, like a depressing number of the problems I see around me, I have no idea of how to fix it. The most I can do is try to work on the problems at my level, and hope that the fix percolates to the top of the system. In, say, thirty or forty years. To that end, I've contacted the local political group and asked about joining. We'll see what happens.