Political philosophy part one

OK, time for number one on my earlier political philosophy list, "How should politicians and office holders behave."

Well, of course, they should behave honorably, which Shakespeare made clear is not what we saw in Caesar's assassins, in spite of their talking about honor almost nonstop.

Honor would it seem excludes assassination.  Really?  Was Caesar a danger to the Roman state because he was "ambitious?" Well, yes he was, but his ambition was to stop the centuries-old power of an ingrained aristocracy called the Senate.  His plan was to extract its teeth, and that is the real reason they did him in.  The Roman constitution as it was had evolved via compromises for centuries, was way out of line with the fact of Empire, and would soon have fallen had Augustus not come along.  While there were things he did that make me wince, he at least set affairs in pretty good order.

So that is one thing a politician (henceforth this includes office holders) should never do and that is trust enemies, nor thrust themselves into public places.  There is no need for it nowadays, with TV and the Internet and so on.  Which should the politician be -- brave or stupid?  The handshaking and so on is just to get on TV anyway, and these things, while traditional, have no effect, except maybe on the person who gets their hand shaken, which can never add up to winning an election.  It is a waste of the politician's energy and hard on their hands (unless they give sloppy, weak, handshakes that are understandable but not impressive).  People important to a society are too important to put themselves at risk.

I think the honestly conducted press conference or just a policy statement delivered on TV (or whatever should become its equivalent in future).  By the way, a comment on journalist ethics, something that we often see ignored in the pursuit of fame -- questions at a press conference should be real questions, not traps or just statements of the opponent's position.  Otherwise the politician should be direct and put the journalist down in public with a response to the effect that you are looking for real questions.

A more important aspect of honorable behavior, though is lack of corruption, which goes way, way beyond accepting valuable bribes and favors.  It includes not exchanging political favors, not voting pork.  One of the most corrupt persons I can think of was a long term Senator from West Virginia who seemed to live for this.  I don't mention his name out of respect for the dead.

As things go today, then, it is obvious the U.S, is beset with corruption, and the consequences can be seen with bridges that go nowhere, military forts that aren't needed, and all kinds of wasted money.  I will deal with ways to construct institutions to manage these things later, but at least you would think the politician would have the honor and decency to not boast about these things and how they "bring home the bacon."

Alongside honor that the Romans were so hypocritical about, there is another thing we can call dignity.  Humor is desirable, but needs careful vetting.  Details like posture and grooming and speaking and so on are important in leadership.  More important though is the use of insults and other propaganda techniques to get elected (like patriotic music in the political commercial, or a flag, or testimonials, or patriotic symbols, or much ado about family and heritage, or anything else inclined to appeal to emotion rather than reason.  You would think the politician is selling soft drinks loaded with sugar.  The opponent needs to be criticized for what bad things they have done, and mistakes they have made, and it needs to be the truth (the whole truth), but the person of the opponent should be out of bounds.

This is of course the biggest problem with democracy -- people are influenced by this behavior.  We wouldn't see negative political advertisements if they didn't work, even though people profess to not like them.  Even if people don't believe the ad, it plants doubts.  No wonder election turnout is the States is so low.

I need to get a dig in here about lawyers.  As my blog probably makes pretty clear, I have a bad opinion of them as a class, as being the only profession for smart people to enter that has no particular reason to get into except money.  That they dominate the political class and as a result make laws where the interest of the political class remains well protected and it become almost impossible to do anything without hiring one tells me they should be banned from holding office.  They have already demonstrated their lack of honor and primary pecuniary interests, so they should not be allowed anywhere the laws they will be carrying out.  I'm sure there are a few honorable lawyers, and when one meeds one personally, they seem caring and interested, until one wants to compromise or one gets the bill and even worse if one contests it.