Why Career Politicians Can Be A Good Thing

It is cliched to point out that we live in changing times, damaging times, turbulent times.  Really, since the 1960's there hasn't been a time in American life that hasn't frequently been interrupted, sometimes for the good but increasingly more often for the bad, by disruptions to the norms of everyday Americans.  From Vietnam to Watergate, from AIDS to Iraq, from 9/11 to Katrina to in the past few weeks, the repeal of DACA, Harvey, and the continued nuclear specter of North Korea & the rise of a more public white nationalism, America has had a lot of dark moments in the past half century and in 2017 in particular.  There are an enormous amount of problems that are currently before our government and our leaders (and indeed, the world's leaders) to fix, and we have the most divisive president in most of our lifetime's.  One of the things that continually strikes me, though, about Donald Trump's brief tenure in the White House so far is how incredibly, unmistakably bad he is at running the country and working to actually govern.  I'm leaving out, for the moment, the very heavy reality of what his policies are, and instead focusing simply on why Trump has been so intensely ineffective as the leader of the United States, and it's something you aren't going to want to hear: it's because he's not a career politician.

One of my favorite jokes to make when arguing about politics is that politics is one of only two careers where experience is considered a deficit.  The punchline is that the other career is prostitution.  My point here is not only to say something ribald to break the tension during political conversations with acquaintances (which nearly always go poorly), but also to state that politics is strange in terms of what people want out of their professionals.  If you need a lawyer, you don't want someone fresh out of law school.  You want your doctor to not be doing their very first surgery on you.  Accountants, plumbers, roofers-there's no other service career where experience, hard work, and dedication to an occupation isn't of value to the public-at-large.  Yet when it comes to politicians, by god you don't want to campaign as an "experienced voice for the people," because then you're a career politician, and you'll soon be an ex-politician.

There's a reason for this, of course-this isn't a fear based out of nothing.  We associate people who are career politicians as being out-of-touch with the everyday concerns of the American people, and as being more susceptible to bribery or corruption.  There's credence here-look at someone like Rep. Lee Terry complaining about not getting his paycheck while he was depriving thousands of government workers of their own ability to do their jobs during the shutdown (he rightfully lost reelection afterwards).  This is hardly a bipartisan issue-both sides of the coin can be accused of not properly understanding the woes of the average American citizen living paycheck-to-paycheck (this is also, quite frankly, one of the few criticisms that seems genuinely earned for the larger news media, lobbyists, and political pundits at large...I would argue to at least a certain degree they are all out-of-touch with what the average American legitimately thinks and cares about).  And I can think of at least fifty career politicians off-hand who have been involved in bribery, corruption, or "disreputable if not technically illegal" activity since I started following politics, and at least a couple of them aren't from New Jersey.  These are legitimate concerns, but they overshadow the larger problem-we need informed people to govern the country because the average American can't do what the president does.

Quite frankly, we have seen that in recent years when we simply elected governors to the office of the White House.  There have been harsh learning curves for individuals like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush when it came to foreign affairs, frequently bungling international situations when more experienced individuals would have been able to better handle these incidents.  Arguably the most prepared person when it came to diplomacy abroad as POTUS in recent memory was George HW Bush, who as CIA Director, UN ambassador, a congressman, RNC Chairman, and Vice President, was able to quickly navigate the politics of Washington and win quite swiftly a war that made him insanely popular.  A recession driven in large part by the previous administration (which, admittedly, he was a critical player in so it wasn't an unfair association), cost him reelection, but George HW Bush is a prototype for the sort of person you want handling something like the North Korea crisis.  He understands how much is at stake, he realizes who the key players are instantly, and he is ready to do what it takes to keep safe American citizen and their allies in the South Pacific (namely Japan and South Korea).  His modern counterparts (people like John Kasich, Hillary Clinton, or even his son Jeb), may not be able to avoid an inevitable standoff with Kim-Jong Un, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't sleep easier at night knowing one of them was in charge.

Donald Trump, though, is neither a governor nor someone with experience in either the legislative or executive branches of DC.  He is, in fact, the first person ever to hold the White House without previously serving in public office or a high military post.  As a result, he doesn't have Bush's knowledge, nor does he know how to run a government on a mini-scale in the way that Clinton, Carter, and George W. Bush all did.  He is not used to the highs-and-lows of voter opinion, and it shows when he constantly tries to publicly correct people's opinions of him, not realizing that actions will do that far, far better than his tweets ever could, and the way he casually & provably lies to try and change the news cycle.  Trump has run a large business, but he has had myriad failures in that time that he was able to correct through bankruptcies and questionable business strategies.  His wealth, in large part, is a result of obsessive personal branding and the good fortune of being born to a very successful and wealthy man.  That's all, and it doesn't cut it when you're running the country or navigating against a terrifying foreign power.  Success in business is very, very different than success in politics, and it's obvious that Donald Trump has not realized the difference yet.

No one could ever accuse Donald Trump of being an average American; he has wealth, power, and celebrity that few people in the country have ever been afforded.  But in interviews and tweets, as well as in public statements, he exhibits as limited of a worldview as you'd find from someone who is the victim of a Jimmy Kimmel on-the-street interview.  I suspect that Trump could, in fact, find North Korea on a map thanks to his NSA team and James Mattis showing him simulations day-in, day-out, but I genuinely think that he'd have trouble explaining why China continues to be a strong ally to North Korea, for example.  He seems to not have a whole grasp on the impact that China/US trade relations have on the global economy, and specifically for his approval ratings, the American economy (otherwise him floating the idea that US will stop trade with China causing a hit to the GDP 3x that of the Great Recession would be considered preposterous, not to mention that a trade war with China will almost certainly hurt the North Korean cause rather than help it).  And he also doesn't understand the deliberate reasons why the United States has Japan and South Korea as such strong allies in the South Pacific, and what an attack to either of them would mean to the world and America's position within it.  The average American, I would be willing to wager, would struggle to explain all of these things.  I'm not an average American when it comes to policy discussions and knowledge on politics, and I would be a little nervous attempting to outline them, and most certainly wouldn't be prepared to make an actual decision upon them.  But I'm not the president, and the average American is not the president-Donald Trump is, and his limited worldview could mean, quite frankly, death and destruction to countless people.  And this is just focusing on North Korea, in my opinion the most pressing world issue at the moment, but climate change, Harvey, immigration, tax reform, criminal justice-you name an issue that is part of the American conversation and you can be assured it affects millions of people, and Trump seems incapable of intelligently conversing on any of these subjects.

This points to the key fallacy with not liking career politicians, and that is this: the Constitution states that any naturally-born 35-year-old can hold the office of President of the United States, but in the powers that it grants that position, it clearly is pointing out that not every person should be president of the United States.  That's hard to grasp, but it's reality.  The leader-of-the-free-world has such awesome responsibility to shape the course of human history that they should, in fact, have some experience before they have that position.  And yes, some of the best experience in being in that chair may be running a smaller government (like a governor), serving in Congress so you are able to realize what goes into passing laws (a senator or congressman), serving in a high-ranking military post to gain knowledge of world affairs (like a general), or running a major branch of the government so you realize what far-reaching authority and impact it has on people's lives (like the head of a cabinet-level department or a Vice President).  This is why, up until Trump, every person who has served in the Oval Office has had one of these four experiences and frequently several of them-because it was a good idea.  The government doesn't run itself, and as Trump has illustrated in the past seven-and-a-half months, it can become a shit show quickly if you don't have someone who is firmly grounded in reality of what his intellectual limitations are, and either learns or defers those decisions to those who are smart enough to make said decisions.  Career politician may be an ugly term, but undervaluing experience in government for our leaders comes at great risk-not everyone can run the country, not everyone can make critical decisions about domestic and foreign policy AND understand what those decisions mean.  You may choose to disvalue extensive public service in our elected leaders, but as Trump has pointed out, you do so at your own peril.