Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek has a good post about why decent people avoid politics. He writes:
Decent people avoid politics not because they have anything to hide; not because raising money is a challenge; and not because they don?t care about the public issues of the day.
Instead, a decent person refuses to split verbal hairs and play the other word games that politicians typically play. A decent person cannot bring himself to pose with countless babies and smile and goo-goo and pretend that there’s nothing in the world that he’d prefer to do than to spend his days kissing infants and toddlers. A decent person refuses to pose as an expert on all issues of the day. A decent person is repulsed by the prospect of pretending, day after day, to care as intensely about the lives and well-being of vast swathes of strangers as he cares about his own life and well-being.
Decent people simply cannot bring themselves to behave in public the way most politicians behave.
All this is good rhetoric, but I think he is missing a vital point. A person risks loss of privacy and the possibility of being held up for public ridicule. Politics is a risky business. I may have interesting opinions about how to govern, but I am unwilling/unable to suffer the risks or sacrifices in terms of time and resources. Let’s not demean our politicians. It’s one thing to suggest that politicians hedge their bets by ambiguous language or flipflop positions or that they compromise core principles. It’s another thing to imply that politicians enter politics simply for self-aggrandizement.
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