The Career Politician Question

Photograph by Andrew Harnik / AP / Shutterstock

In liberal democracies, voters have become sceptical of the archetypal career politician. In Germany, the resignation of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has held the role since 2005, has caused a mutiny amongst supporters of her centre-right Christian Democratic Union party. Voters who remained loyal to the CDU due to Merkel's personality are uninspired by the incoming leader of the party, Armin Laschet, and CDU polling figures have fallen accordingly. Laschet is widely regarded to be a career politician, having held public office since 1994, and is generally characterised as "boring". In the United States, famously, voters rejected Hillary Clinton, a woman who had served as Senator and Secretary of State, in favour of a man with no prior political experience; in fact, many voters cited Trump's lack of political experience as the reason they were attracted to his campaign. Both Germany and the United States are prosperous nations and both states, at least in their modern transfiguration, were conceived in the name of liberalism. All states are marked by issues of some sort, but one might expect Germans and Americans to be satisfied with their representatives. Nevertheless, both states appear to be rejecting career politicians in favour of charismatic outsiders. We will examine how career politicians come about and whether their existence as a permanent feature of Western politics is favourable.

The theory of representative democracy posits that elections for public office should occur at regular intervals. The logical conclusion of such thinking is that politicians who have been elected on numerous consecutive occasions are simply the most suited for the role. However, modern liberal societies have no guarantor for the competency of elected officials. In most liberal democracies, only the candidates of established, major political parties have a significant chance of winning elections. This is due to the fact that most voters lack the will to conduct rigorous research into the idiosyncrasies of the various candidates in any election. Therefore, major political parties are ultimately responsible for selecting prospective public officials. Political parties tend to nominate politicians that will affirm partisan orthodoxy, ergo, nominations are given to longstanding members, who are better known as career politicians. Thus, we can ascertain that career politicians are a direct consequence of liberal democracy.

If there is to be a permanent set of men and women in government, one might hope that their knowledge, character and actions deem them worthy of such positions. Career politicians should be the most cognitively able, the most honest and the most patriotic. They must fulfill the role of public servant by improving the lives of their citizens and defending their society's way of life - public office is not to be treated as an entry-level job for the public speaking industry, nor should politicians accrue financial gain due to insider trading practices. Given these stipulations, I do not believe there to be any longstanding politician in the legislature of any Western nation who could be deemed a just career politician. On numerous occasions, "representatives" have been found to benefit financially from private information; to be staunchly opposed to emblems of national pride; and to use their office to benefit family members. Career politicians are, in the present state of affairs, a stain on our government.

Nevertheless, it is not necessarily true that career politicians must necessarily have these qualities. It is possible for a career politician to serve the interests of his people. Lee Kuan Yew was Prime Minister of Singapore for over three decades and transformed the country into an economic powerhouse in this period. Notably, an important feature of the just career politician is that he is only ever found in societies that do not emphasise free and open elections. This is explained by the fact that, in such societies, career politicians cannot hide behind the excuse of being "chosen by the people." When elected representatives are criticised for acting irresponsibly, the most common retort is that because the people at large voted for them, they have no right to complain and should instead reserve their grievances for the next election. In stark contrast, when unelected representatives fail to govern well, they are violently deposed - whether it be by a domestic figurehead, a foreign regnant or the people themselves. There is no "will of the people" to hide behind. Appeals to the people, therefore, must be based on national improvement rather than mere polls. Thus, career politicians can only exist in illiberal societies.

Portuguese football manager José Mourinho once described a rival of his, Arsene Wenger, as a "specialist in failure." Mourinho believed that although Wenger had been a manager for a lengthy period of time, it was meaningless as he was not as accomplished as him. In doing so, Mourinho embodied the sentiment of the average voter. Experience alone cannot justify assuming a role of leadership. Citizens do not want a "specialist in failure" - they reject longstanding politicians who have not enriched the nation. Incompetent career politicians are the direct result of liberal democracies and so, democracies should be, at the very least, heavily scrutinised.