Should our Bush Era politicians keep their jobs?

In My Humble Opinion
1

For the record, I’m not interested in political driveby sniping, if you’re interested in that there’s a couple dozen other threads in GD you can visit instead. So with that in mind, consider the following:

I’ve been thinking about the state of the country and our economy. We’re mortgaging our future to bail out a bunch of greedheads and poorly managed companies that are incapable of consistent profitability. We’ve spent whatever political capital we gained as a result of 9/11. We’re facing a depression. No matter how far along the political spectrum you are it seems fair to state that neither party is pure - it was a co-operative effort that got us where we are.

With all of the problems our politicians (and thier contributors) have managed to get us into I wonder: Is there a single politician in any elected federal office, in either party, that deserves to keep thier job? Is there anyone who consistently stood up and said “Um, fellas, are you out of your fucking minds?” By any business standard, many of these folks wouldn’t last a week in an honest job - thier shifting, dealing, and backroom bullshit would have them out the door and in the bread line before they could raid the office supplies.

If your answer is yes, please identify the politician and why. In general I don’t subscribe to the “all politicians suck” line of thinking, so I’m willing to consider that there are a few folks in office that performed well and put the country ahead of the party line. I just don’t know who they might be.

If no, does that mean you’re planning to support another candidate, either in your own party of another, in the next election for either congressional house? Will you put your money and time where your mouth is, and be willing to support a political neophyte in the hope that he or she will put thier efforts toward the betterment of the country?

Disclaimer: I know that party line and the “good of the country” can be synonymous to some, so feel free to include that in your calculations of whether the officeholder should or shouldn’t keep thier job.

For me: No, I don’t know any, and yes I intend to support candidates that don’t have a history of “public service.” My feeling on “public service” is that it should be short and effective. I’m uncomfortable with any person who is a professional politician. Sort of like the old adage “those who can’t do, teach” I feel that in many cases “those who don’t know, run for office.”

2

I’m uncomfortable with the idea that a politician should sweep into high office and expunge every clerk and every public servant purely on the basis of political patronage. I’m also likely to seethe at the idea, ever more prevalent these days, that upon making a single mistake someone should be removed from his job, never to work again. The cop arrested the wrong guy? Fire him! That teacher was photographed in a bikini? Fire her! That sports announcer said a bad word? Fire him! That guy committed a crime? He should be fired and never work for anybody again! That’ll teach him how to be a responsible working adult!

I think the presumption should be that you remove someone from their position if they’re not doing the job correctly. If they have become a public relations liability, remove them from public view, but give them something else productive to do.

3

You seem to be under the impression that some “Lone Ranger” standing up for an ideal would actually accomplish any good. IMHO, to actually get anything done in a political system requires a deep understanding of the various parties and their positions and why they hold them. That allows you to hash out the common ground that would allow the system to be influenced in your desired direction. A political neophyte without a deep understanding of motivations and the existing power structure won’t accomplish anything, in spite of their good intentions. The best you can hope for is someone who is not personally duplicitous and is trying to advance positions that are close to your own interests–but that person also needs the power and relationships to get something done.

And I’m wondering why you’re holding up the business community as some paragon of honesty. We’ve seen plenty of “shifting, dealing, and backroom bullshit” from that crowd, too. And, no, not just at the top. The corruption in the housing industry seemed to go from the receptionist on up.

4

It was illegalized.

5

If you’re asking solely about consistency, Ron Paul has consistently voted against programs which he believes (in a construction that is more or less idiosyncratic to his wing of his party) to be outside the Constitutional mandate of Congressional powers. Whether that leads to good results or bad is essentially a function of your political viewpoints. I’m not a constituent of his.

I do, however, disagree with your premise. It’s very easy to criticize politicians as somehow being worse than the rest of society or as being unfit for jobs in the “real world,” but the world is on the whole a hell of a lot worse than you’re characterizing it. Shifting, dealing, backroom bullshit - is this stuff really rare in the work you’ve done? Really?

6

There are 2 qualifications for POTUS: age, and natural citizenship.
There is one qualification for membership in Congress and that is citizenship.
There are 2 qualifications for voting: age and citizenship.
The people who work for the President and Congress are approved by the President and members of Congress.

Nowhere in this situation is skill mandated as a function of the job.

Maybe that should be the focal point.

7

Thoughtful answer Harriet. Do you think that many (or any, or most) politicians now actually have that deep understanding of the political system?

And I don’t think I’m holding up the business community as a paragon of anything, but I see how the OP could sound that way. However, in a general sense I can say that in business a person who does not deliver is in a positon to lose his or her job. So much of the political arena seems to run on inertia to me, and the seemingly ineffective people are elected over and over. I talk to the majority of my friends, and they not only don’t know the issues that affect them, but can’t name a single person who represents them - state, local, federal - it doesn’t matter. They just have no idea. And yet, they go and cast their votes every single election.

That was probably unfair of me in the OP. I’m aware that many politicians have had jobs in the real world, and that it has all of shifty backroom stuff of politics. The difference between the two is that we have no power whatsoever to remove, say, the head of Citibank. On the other hand, we as voters have the power and the duty to ensure that our elected representatives are doing their job carefully and thoughtfully.

Do you feel that you were well represented over the last 8 years? (hell, that was probably a better question for the OP)

Magiver: Good point. What qualifications should we look for?

8

I think quite a few of them do. I would say that even of perhaps my least favorite Bush-era politician, Dick Cheney. My problem with him is not that he is ineffective, but that his interests were not at all aligned with mine.

Have you had a chance to get to know any politicians as people? Obviously, this is easier at the local level than nationally. If you do get a chance to get to know some a bit, you may be surprised how well they know a wide variety of people from various backgrounds, what those people’s goals and priorities are, and an incredible amount of history in a “not learned in school” sense.

9

Can you clarify what you think effectiveness is in a politician?

10

Barack Obama was a Senator during the Bush era. Should we fire him too?

Like it or not, the only nationwide elective offices in our country are the President and the Vice-President. That means that if the voters in Utah want to elect governors, senators, and representatives that you don’t approve of there’s nothing you can do.

And wether you like it or not, the voters are the ones that choose our elected officials. You’re one voter, you get one vote. Everyone else gets to vote too.

11

A book that I think packs a lot of good information about problems in the political process into a brief package is Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff by Arthur M. Okun. At 124 pages, it sheds light on a lot of the reasons behind frustration with goverment.

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No, I never have but I suspect you’re probably right. I’ll pick up your book and add it to my stack. Thanks for the recommendation.

Ace309 - In the most basic sense I would look for integrity, the ability to work with others - including those they disagree with to ensure that the common good covers as many people as possible, an understanding of economic theory, or at least the ability to read a balance sheet and understand the numbers, and finally one that puts the interests of the electorate at large above those of financial contributors. I know it’s idealistic on the whole, but that’s what I’d like to see.

Lemur866 - Um, did you bother to read the OP? I’m gonna guess no, but thanks for pointing out that I only have one vote anyway. That’s been confusing me for years and years.

13

Actually both Houses have age requirements. In the House of Representatives it’s 25 and in the Senate it’s 30. There are also residency requirements. See Article I §§ 2-3.

14

Our government and politicians are reflections of our citizenry. It is BS when things go wrong to blame politicians. The politicians did not force people to take loans they could not pay, or to speculate in real estate with no training other than home improvement shows. If any politician during the housing bubble had stood up and said poor people should not be buying houses or that the stock market is to high, they would have been run out of town. Politicans like to promise impossible things to get elected and if it didn’t work they wouldn’t do it.