politicians

There may be one or two Americans left in the country who don’t know that we are currently living in an anti-Establishment, anti-professional, anti-politician era. Nationally we have voted someone into the Presidency whose primary claim to high office is that he has never held office. (In my own state, we have had a smaller version of the exact same phenomenon.) In virtually every Congressional and state-level campaign beyond the Presidential elections, we have candidates (including incumbents) engaged in an ever-escalating rhetorical battle to claim the low ground of experience. In Politicians: The Worst Kind of People to Run the Government, Except for all the Others, Bruce K. Chapman argues that this disdain for long-serving public servants has to stop. Read More ›

About the Book

Americans love to trash their politicians as corrupt and self-interested, but they don’t agree on a solution. How can America attract good leaders to the thousands of elective offices in the land? In Polticians: The worst Kind of People to Run the Government, Except for All the Others, Bruce Chapman lays out a bold plan for the changes we need to make in our public life if we are serious about enable worthy leaders to emerge to and to succeed. Drawing on history as well as his own extensive experience in politics and public policy, Chapman challenges the conventional wisdom about politicians, arguing that their chief rivals — the media, bureaucrats, college professors, and even political “reform” groups — are often sources of further political demoralization rather than renewal. Republicans and Democrats alike, conservatives and liberals, have a stake in responding to the stirring and provocative challenge raised by this book.

As someone who has run for public office — once in vain and twice successfully — I understand the experience of candidates and elected officials. I therefore wish to honor those who have just completed another grueling campaign season. I do so as someone leaving public office and returning to life as a private citizen. In December, I will retire Read More ›

His political art appears artless. He is a partisan truly loved by colleagues in the opposition party, as well as in his own. Fellow politicians appreciate his unusual habit of giving credit rather than taking it. In four elected offices over a cumulative 32 years, he remains one of the few candidates who promised a voluntary limit on the terms Read More ›

The victors are toasted and courted, their victory parties packed. People who didn’t answer their calls during the campaign are clamoring now to get onto their schedules. But, as usual, many backers of the losers found it inconvenient to show up at election-night wakes. Defeated candidates typically are allowed a graceful departure speech, but then are expected to disappear. Hardly Read More ›

The truth is that the Seattle municipal elections now ending are most notable for their relative lack of rancor and underhanded tactics. Attempts at creating scandals have been half-hearted and fizzled fast. The ad-hominem attacks have been rare and pitifully unimaginative, the exposure of political correctness gaffes almost nonexistent. And we call ourselves a world-class city! For people in the Read More ›

You finally find yourself wanting to help out Charlie Chong; not vote for him, necessarily, just help him make the mayor’s race more interesting by tying together the obviously disconnected strings of his campaign. The avowedly “populous” cause almost always wins elections in Seattle and nothing sells better than those old salted chestnuts, “neighborhood values.” So Chong’s single theme of Read More ›