So later on in life I was talking to one of my friends who is actually a politician herself. She lives in a town in Central Jersey and serves in city government. We were driving along one day and I mentioned to her a little bit about my friends joke which sparked a very interesting conversation about politics. We discussed many thing and some where along the way I asked the question what a politician's job really is. Her answer was simple and informative. She said that a politician only has to do one thing. All they have to do is be reelected. That is the primary job of a politician to make sure that they are in favor with the public so that they are reelected when their position is put up for grabs.
So what do you think that implies? My most optimistic side hopes that means that politicians do what is in the best interests of the people they serve and that the people then recognize their efforts and reelect them. Unfortunately, I am sure that you can come up with just as many less-than-ideal scenarios as I can as to how this mentality could be abused. So what does this all really mean? It means that a politician can never be the bad guy.
For all of you that have seen the movie The Dark Knight this is a perfect tie in to that point. Why was Batman the best hero for Gotham? It was because he wasn't the hero, he was the bad guy. He did what would be best for the city by taking the blame for everything. He was not the knight in shining armor. He wasn't given an award with Han Solo by Princess Leia in the closing credits. He was the bad guy. He was the dark knight.
He is a quick practical example of how politicians repeatedly fail to take on that role. Fiscal policy in government is highly influenced by Keynesian economics. This school of thinking states that government using deficit spending to stimulate the economy during times of economic down turns and that during times of economic boom the government increases taxes to pay back the debt that they incurred and create a surplus for the next down cycle. It is a little more complicated than that should suffice for the discussion. We have all seen this happen. The government spends money and gives out money to help during economic distress. But how many of us have ever heard a politician use the phrase 'we are going to raise taxes to pay off our debt and took make sure that the slump that is right around the corner is avoided'? No one hears that because it would make the politicians the bad guys and that is a situation they cannot afford to be in or else they would be facing an 'economic slump' personally.
Now to jump topics briefly. So what makes good parents good at parenting? There are many things but I would say that one of them is that they are great at being the bad guy and in the long run it helps their kids. I never wanted to have a curfew when I was in high school but I did have one because my dad was really good at being the bad guy. Now that I look back on it I am really grateful that he had the guts to be the bad guy. Was I grateful then? No, and I probably complained more than I choose to remember. Our parents did things that were not popular with us as kids, but they did it to help us out.
So to wrap everything up, the reason that politicians would be horrible parents is because they cannot be the bad guy. They just sit on your skin and get what they want.
