How do you solve a problem like career politicians?

Coming to this topic from the perspective of U.S. politics, as I'm not familiar with the UK system to know if the same concepts apply.

We all make fun of politicians. At best they're called ineffectual and wooden, at worst corrupt and pathological liars. One possible reason for this is that for most public officials, being a politician is their life work; when your livelihood depends on holding office, the interests of the public become secondary. Except those interests that get them elected of course.

To wit, how does one go about limiting the effect that "career" has on a public servant? A few possibilities I've observed:

• Do away with career politics altogether: Politicians become akin to volunteer Jurors; they get elected, serve their term, then go back to their lives. May or may not receive a wage as compensation for their term. Pros: Eliminates the investment in staying in government your whole life since you can't make a living on it. No incumbents means voters only have the issues to go on rather than a familiar face. Cons: Not everyone can take a hiatus from work, though unlike Jury duty it wouldn't be compulsory, so anyone who runs for office will presumably take care of their employment needs elsewhere.

• Limit terms and term lengths for all offices: For many offices there's no limit to how many times a politician may be re-elected. Make it so every elected position has a finite number of terms. Pros: Ensures new blood while allowing legitimate expertise in government to thrive as needed. Cons: Doesn't solve the problem of outside agencies like parties and lobbyists influencing officials, who now can't count on dedicated bases to keep them in office for ever.

• Eliminate party affiliations: Political parties would still exist as idealogical organizations, but public officials do not affiliate themselves with them any more than they'd campaign on behalf of Exxon or Microsoft. All politicians are effectively Independent, and party contributions would be treated as lobbying. Pros: As public officials, their duties are to the public, not parties. Cons: Party support and contributions becomes a lobbying issue, which needs reform in and of itself.

Anyway, those are my starting points. Thoughts?

edited 26th Mar '11 7:55:18 AM by Ratix

Congressional term limits, plain and simple. Nobody worth their salt says any other solution. The shorter the term limits the better we'll all be.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Assassination politics.

Enjoy the Inferno...

That only results in increased security.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

That, or survival of those who can afford the best assassins.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Which basically reduces politics to that of The Mafia.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

I think Nebraska already does something similar to the third option.

Anyway, term limits do have risks. The main one being that inexperienced politicians aren't necessarily as good at actually governing. And you can't simply apply experience from elsewhere. Many business leaders have found that running a government is completely different than running a company.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Hey, I could get a better job!

You mean it wasn't already?

Enjoy the Inferno...

I actually think all the potential solutions to fix the "problem" of career politicians end up being worse than the actual problems. Or to be more precise, I think that things such as strict term limits result in a situation that makes long-term planning even more unlikely. Not to mention I don't believe that it results in less corruption, it ends up resulting in more corruption as people get while the getting is good.

Just my opinion however.

FWIW I think the general problem that you're looking to solve isn't so much a matter of corruption, it's a matter of politicians trying to juggle various interests (I.E. votes) and doing it in a certain way that makes sense in terms of their experiences. And considering that politics does take resources, generally speaking politicians do come from the upper brackets, so it's that point of view that makes the most sense to them. And generally speaking politicians really do act in that sort of way.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Would you prefer hobby politicians?

Alternatively, rather than shorter term limits, you may want to try longer term times.

Alternatively, the Romans had a situation where you couldn't go back to a position for 10 years after your term ended. Of course, given how that ended up...

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

• term limits, hands down. A big part of the problem is the congressmen getting in, and getting in again, and to do that, they need campaign money which they get from the big megacorps. Then, while they're in office, they kiss the shoes of the megacorps so they'll continue to support them the next time they run, and the cycle starts all over again.

It won't solve the problem of lobbying completely, but it's a step in the right direction.

edited 26th Mar '11 8:57:43 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Another problem I forgot to mention in the OP is: getting politicians to actually enact any sort of change that would impact their "industry". When Congress can vote to give themselves pay raises, is there really any hope for change outside a Supreme Court ruling declaring career politics unconstitutional?

On the money in politics issue... take the money out of politics. Just set a spending limit for campaigning (a small one, not a multi-million dollar one) and limit the scale of campaigning. Maybe hold a national (or for state elections, local), state-sponsored event where politicians can, on national tv and with no expense to themselves, get their message across, and confront their opponents. Have every politician going for an office write up a manifesto, put it on the net, and ensure the message goes out about this site so every citizen can go and fairly compare the policies.

In other words, level the playing field and make politicians independent of corporations.

edited 26th Mar '11 9:14:06 AM by GameChainsaw

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

The problem with this is that when you put hard term limits on the politicians, it transfers some of their power to unelected, unknown bureaucrats, who have zero accountability to the general public and who are usually in their positions for life. I don't see that as an improvement.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

We're there already, and have been there for some time.

Not as much as you would like to think.

I'd personally prefer it if more beureacrats were doing stuff, as is they tend to know a fair bit but politicans seem to just want the things that match their own ideas to information provided.

^^^ And keeping crazies like Nancy Pelosi around forever is better? The Congress isn't supposed to turn into an aristocracy that's why people are proposing term limits.

edited 26th Mar '11 9:41:01 AM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Abolish congress altogether. They've already given up their two powers, the budget and declaring wars.

I'm a skeptical squirrel

I like the idea of term limits, but I also like the idea that if I wanted to become a politician, I could actually, you know, support myself and/or my family on it for more than just four years, so it seems like the idea is to have congressional term limits, and then when you're past your limit, BAM! You're one of "the dinosaurs" so you get Kicked Upstairs or something where you hold an office of little to no power that's simultaneously prestigious and depressing, and totally powerless. BAM!

Did I mention it's powerless?

edited 26th Mar '11 10:16:46 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

I think some kind of term limit is probably the only solution. To some extent, the US already practices this in limiting Presidents to two terms in office. I don't think you could easily get rid of political parties as they now exist - they have been around for 2-300 years in this form for a reason. As for treating elected office like jury service, there is the risk you'd end up with a lot of "politicians" who didn't really want the jobs they'd been given and weren't really up to the decisions they were being asked to take. Finding someone innocent or guilty is relatively simple next to some of the complicated decisions politicians have to take.

I don't know whether a PR (proportional representation) voting system affects the length of political careers or not. It's practiced in many countries and there's going to be a referendum in May on introducing it in the UK, but as far as I can tell voting reform isn't a hot topic in America.

"Well, it's a lifestyle."

Term limits sound nice in theory. However, it turns committee assignments (the main form of "power" in a representative government) into a crapshoot, and nothing short of a constituional amendment is ever going to make it happen.

535 people can't govern the interests of 300 million, and changing the 535 out every two to six years isn't going to make much of a difference in that regard.

Does a term limit prevent you from running for your old seat again in the future? Say, one term down the line?

edited 26th Mar '11 11:29:13 AM by johnnyfog

I'm a skeptical squirrel

The problem with term limits is that, while it solves the problem of career politicians, it blows open the problem of special interests. The general idea is this: more "established" candidates have more pull and more fundraising power, so they're less likely to be dependent on one source of donations (if they piss them off, they can simply get money elsewhere.) Less tenured candidates, on the other hand, don't have that kind of power, and if they piss off their funding sources they can say hi to a losing reelection bid. Term limits prevent the kind of "establishment" needed to prevent this.