… is from pages 8-9 of Peter Schweizer’s 2013 book, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets:
Politics in Washington is a lot like professional wrestling. What seems like vicious combat to the uninitiated is actually choreographed acting. Professional wrestlers face off in the ring, shouting and pointing fingers and appearing to hate each other. But in fact, they are partners in a commercial enterprise to entertain and extract money from the audience.
DBx: Yep.
Near the end of his excellent – and favorable – review, in Regulation, of my GMU Econ colleague Garett Jones’s new book, 10% Less Democracy, David Henderson expresses understandable displeasure when he learned from Garett that Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) would often affectionately bear-hug each other in the corridors of the Capitol. (Garett once served as an aide to Hatch, and David remembers Kennedy’s abominable behavior after the tragic incident at Chappaquiddick.) While Peter Schweizer’s point does nothing to diminish David’s (or anyone else’s) distaste for Kennedy, it does help us to better understand the character of the great majority of people who successfully seek and retain power.
