This got me thinking: what does motivate politicians? Or, put another way, why are some people motivated to be politicians and others not? Most of John Salvatier’s list of reasons could apply to most anyone. I suspect that Robert Heinlein was almost right when he said there are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to tell other people what to do and those who don’t. I imagine that it’s more a matter of degree. Politicians must have a greater than average desire for power, combined with whatever skills are needed to be elected or appointed. They see themselves as having good intentions and see their exercise of power as a public service. That’s all it takes. You can be dumber than dirt and have the ethics of a weasel and still be a successful politician.
It’s hard for ordinary citizens to understand what drives politicians. I imagine most of them think the greatest public service than can perform is to remain in office. Everyone has to trade off between things they value highly and things they value less highly, and for politicians, remaining in office or attaining higher office has a very high value indeed. For the common good, of course.
Tags: common good
December 1, 2007 at 7:27 pm |
Politicians are ego-centric and the main motivation for them to get AND retain office is POWER! Most people will tell you money but that is not true, it’s power and as you point out above, they can be dumber than dirt and have the ethics of a weasel.
RWD
December 3, 2007 at 1:11 am |
[...] 3, 2007 in public choice by jsalvati In response to my last post, Jim Dew expresses the intuition that politicians are self selected for the desire for power and control, and so we should expect politicians to seek power and control more than other people. This is an [...]