The job of ‘professional politicians’

Many of us have jokingly referred to friends and colleagues who spend
a great deal of time getting a higher education as “professional
students.” Well, there is another term we can use to describe another
class of persons that isn’t so funny — that of “professional
politician.”

These days professional politicians rule our country. While that
might seem like a good idea, it isn’t because professional politicians,
by and large, have little or no real world experience. In short,
political experience does not translate into reality in the game
of life in the U.S.A.

It’s one thing to want a professional firefighter to put out your
house if it catches fire. It’s one thing to want a professional plumber
to fix your leaking pipes. These people do one thing for a
living and they do it well.

But if you’ve ever wondered why some of our laws, rules and
regulations are impractical, illogical and just plain absurd, it’s
because professional politicians are trying to make rules and laws
pertaining to things they know nothing about.

President Bill Clinton, for instance, is a classic example of the
pure political professional. This man has never owned a business or
even met a payroll, yet he claims to know how to manage a $2 trillion
national budget. He has never owned a home, yet he claims to know how
difficult it is to find decent housing for some Americans. In fact, he’s
been paid with tax money all his professional life and has had every
basic need met, yet he claims to relate and “feel the pain” of the
average American family. How many “average American families” can be
reasonably compared to the Clintons?

Sen. Edward Kennedy from Massachusetts is another classic example of
the professional politician. This man, who comes from a family which
made its millions selling bootleg (meaning illegal) liquor during
Prohibition, sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and claims to have
an intimate knowledge of the law. Though he is a lawyer, he
hasn’t practiced since 1962 — the first year he was elected to the
Senate. So after being raised on money made illegally and never really
practicing law, he can preside over the judicial system of the country?

At the end of his current term Kennedy will have served 42
years in the Senate — without once ever having to experience a
layoff, a “scale-down,” a “restructure,” or, for that matter, a small
household budget. Yeah, we can all relate to his life, can’t we?

There are dozens of other examples of professional politicians today,
but you get the idea. I mentioned Clinton and Kennedy specifically,
however, because these two characters love to position themselves as
friends of the working class — as if they even know what working class
people are really like.

Now granted, there is nothing wrong with someone who simply wants to
make a life out of serving the public. In its purest form, public
service — doing what you can to make the lives of those you serve
better — is an admirable thing. But today’s political pros are nothing
like the kind of public servants envisioned by our founding fathers and
worse, they don’t even have the life experiences necessary to make sound
judgments on behalf of people who do.

When the nation was being formed, the founders envisioned a Congress
and a president of the people, manned with regular folks for what
they believed would be short periods of time (so that others could serve
too). The notion of a professional politician by today’s standards was
anathema to men like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Benjamin
Franklin. Indeed, none of these men believed American politicians would
be paid like upper class citizens, retire with well-above-average
pensions, and have no experience whatsoever living a “regular”
life.

The pitiful state of the U.S. military today is the direct result of
so many serving congressmen and senators (and presidents) having little
or no armed forces experience.

The vast amounts of corporate regulatory costs are the result of our
leaders having no experience in working in or managing a corporation (or
even a small business).

Many of our laws prohibiting this or that are the result of our
leaders having the privilege of getting around them, especially while
they’re in session — a luxury “average Americans” do not enjoy.

And recently, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) said he
would have no problem raising taxes (again) to fund better public
education, whatever that means. Yet he makes this claim without having
to use the public school system he has helped create nor even knowing
what goes on inside America’s public school classrooms. He thinks more
money will solve the problems of a lack of discipline, a lack of
scholarly achievement, and a lack of rudimentary skills because he has
no idea what it’s like to have a 13-year-old child coming home from
eighth grade who cannot even write complete sentences. It’s absurd.

Even President Clinton, as big as he claims to be on public
education, refused to send his own daughter to one of D.C.’s dangerous
public schools, as have most lawmakers in the nation’s capitol.

The point is, if we’re to have laws that reflect the reality of
American society, we need to have realists in office who’ve been there
and done that. That means we cannot tolerate 40-year politicians and
presidents who have never even drawn a paycheck from the private sector.
That means shuffling the deck in Washington a lot more often than we
have done so in the past 30-odd years.

Professional politicians can never know what daily life is all about
for average Americans. The mere fact that we sometimes use the phrase,
“The ruling class” to describe our politicians tells me that there is a
real disconnect between those making the rules in this country and those
who have to follow them.