Politicians and Perfection

If, as I claim here, it isn’t valid to hold doctors to a standard of perfection, is it inconsistent to believe that politicians be held to the same standard? I think it is.

Politicians are obviously not perfect, and to deride the political process because politicians are not perfect is, I believe, unproductive. (Remember, this comes from a guy who once sported license plates on his car that read “GOVT SUX.”) But understanding the difference between a politician's honest mistake and his abusing the political process to violate others’ rights and wield undue power for personal gain is essential for the survival of a society of free citizens.

We cannot guard against politicians committing honest errors, and we should forgive the offending politician who commits and subsequently recognizes his error. But we can indeed guard against institutional bias inherent in the political process that perpetuates the violation of rights and leads to the abuse of political power. The Founding Fathers understood this distinction clearly and wrote the Constitution as a means of constraining this bias. Sadly, I think that it has largely failed.

Americans all too frequently perceive that their government is a beneficient despot, and our continuing acceptance of this absurd view of government further erodes existing constraints. Until we realize that government is not some beneficient entity, but is instead an institution comprised largely of self-interested politicians operating within an framework that enables them to dole out political favors and rewards to friends and constituents, we will continue to experience ever-expanding government and the violation of our individual rights.

Don Boudreaux over at Café Hayek lists ten pervasive characteristics of government and the political class that operates it, debunking the perception of government as the beneficient despot. It is worth reading and understanding. Accepting that politicians are fallible is worthy, but as long as we fail to understand that the institutional biases inherent in collective decision-making lead to an abuse of political power, and thus require rigid constraints limiting what can be acheived through the political process, we will continue to witness an erosion of our rights and freedoms.

I believe that primary among the causes of this problem is that, as public choice economics reveals, voters have an idealized and romanticized vision of government: Since citizens have a right to vote (despite that fewer than 50% do vote in even the most important elections), whatever is acheived through the political process is perceived as legitimate and good. I think the following two quotes counter this overly idealistic view of democracy.

Democracy, it seems to me, is built not on political equality, but on political inequality; not on majority rule, but on minority rule and majority acquiescence; not on enlightened consensus, but on apathy and distraction; and not nearly so much on elections as on the frantic and chaotic interweaving and contesting of isolated, self-serving, and often tiny special interest groups and their political and bureaucratic allies.

John Mueller in Capitalism, Democracy and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

“The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.

Sir Alex Fraser Tytler

See this for a similar view of democracy.