So the conclusion I draw is that it was not the times that made the Founders out of whatever raw human material was at hand, but that the Founders themselves, who made an extraordinary contribution that defined self-government on the planet, did so on the basis of their inherent, unique talents,. One could extrapolate from this that today’s politicians, for some reason, lack those talents, and that the people today who do have those talents are not politicians. There are exceptions of course (there were some dull politicos in Philadelphia in 1775, and there are some crackerjacks in DC in 2006), but few would argue the basic premise that today’s best and brightest are not in public service. The question is, why not?
There’s an easy answer going into it. The 18th century citizen of wealth and power was, to some extent, a member of a clearly defined aristocracy for whom public service was expected as a matter of noblesse oblige. In fact, a lot of what these guys were debating about was the concept of aristocracy in a democratic republic, including either maintaining a clear-cut upper class or eliminating it, but whatever their thoughts on the subject, they had been raised to expect as aristos to contribute to governing, and so they did. Combine to this the meritocratic concepts explained by John Adams, the Yankee belief that there should be an earned rather than an inherited aristocracy, and you get to include the Ben Franklins into the mix. This aristocracy was its day’s best and brightest, the most educated, the most capable. And those who were not members of this aristocracy accepted that the aristos would go about the business they were born to. Class didn’t die on 7/4/76, not by any means.
But the world has changed. While we may field the odd dynasty once in a while, we don’t expect to do so. Joe Kennedy may have been breeding his kids for politics, and Prescott Bush may have managed to find a generation or two of his progeny odd jobs in the company business, but they are exceptions. There is not a sense that rich and/or powerful people have a duty to go into government service. It is not in the air that they breathe, as it was for the Founders. Nor is it in the air that we commonfolk should be thankfully supporting the power of these aristos. None of us, rich or poor, have true aristocracy in our genetic fiber, as the 18th century people did, regardless of which side they were on, or whether or not they supported it. It was part and parcel of their culture. It is not part and parcel of ours. My guess is that more people voted against JFK for being Joe’s son than the other way around. Come to think of it, JQA wasn’t the world’s greatest vote getter either. Maybe we’ve always been okay with aristocrats but not with inherited monarchs…
In today’s world, because there’s no other expectation, the best and the brightest get to pick and choose what they want to do, and the idea of becoming a statesman doesn’t seem to make the grade. There are very bright people in politics, but they are not necessarily the politicians. Do you believe that the smartest people in DC today were the ones who were elected? Far from it. Electability requires a number of things, and quite honestly, smarts is not only not one of those requirements, but intelligence is often seen as a negative. Adlai Stevenson was perceived as too smart. Bill Clinton was smart but played it down in the feeling of others’ pain, and given his lack of personal control in the oval office, he wasn’t so smart after all. Gore was seen as a stiff and a brain, and lost (so to speak) to plain-speaking, heartfelt good-old-boy-ism. Hillary may be seen by some as a vicious pol willing to do anything, but she’s also seen as an intellectual calculating vicious pol willing to do anything, and it’s the calculating intellectualism that could be the worst part of it. And everybody else? Average. Not stupid, probably, and maybe clever, but not special. Not excitingly inventive. Not capable of creating a new country from the raw material of disparate colonies.
Why not? If those sort of people exist, why have they mostly gone to ground insofar as politics is concerned? Well, the public scrutiny, for one thing. It’s not that your life is no longer private so much as not one single second of your life is private anymore. You don’t have to have something to hide to want at least some measure of privacy for yourself and your family. And there’s the sense of futility to political life: who’s made a difference lately in a good way? Even if you have something to say and something you want to do, you know you’ll never get elected without a smear campaign, and you’ll never get results of your ideas without selling your soul. You’ll never even get noticed by the electorate unless you can field a fairly large fortune in the first place: where’s our last US president who wasn’t already, shall we say, well-to-do? Hillary spent more money than anyone ever, in the history of the US, to win her senate seat this year, against an opponent no one had ever heard of, who never had a chance. That money has to come from somewhere, either one’s own pocket or the pockets of others to whom you become immediately beholden.
So the best and the brightest, seeing that the most they can hope for in politics is no personal life, little chance of making a difference, and a hole to throw their money into if they have any, look elsewhere. The Founders, unfortunately, quickly found in their own day that they lost personal lives (which is why we know today still of all the dirt on Sally Fairfax and Sally Hemings and such), much of it to an unbridled press that printed what was not necessarily true: hence the Alien & Sedition Acts. But, still, the Founders felt that they had a duty to government, and a belief that they could govern effectually. It was not a frustrating job that inherently went nowhere; you could fail, but you could also succeed. Without that possibility today (how would you like to be the next president of the US cleaning up the Bush mess?), the b & the b go into science and the arts and business and stay there, where they can indeed make a difference. And they do.
It’s too bad, but that’s the way it is. And as far as I can tell, no one knows any way of changing it.
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