… is from pages 2-3 of Peter Schweizer’s 2013 book, Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets:
Journalists and academics look at politics through a mythical lens that harkens back to Aristotle and Plato: politics is the business of producing correct policies. We may dispute what is correct, but in the traditional view, that is the goal of the process. Media reports on government actions, whether debates, legislation, or regulation, almost always present them in terms of pure policy. New laws are for a specific purpose, perhaps even a noble one.
But what if that isn’t the real point of the exercise? What if politics is really largely about fund-raising and making money? The commercial motives of the Permanent Political Class in acting or not acting are rarely questioned and virtually never fully understood.
DBx: Yes.
In reality, of course, there are differences among the motives that move different individuals to seek success in politics, just as there are differences among the motives that move different individuals to seek success in business. But just as in reality it would be absurd to ignore the desire for personal gain when assessing the motives of people who seek success in business, it is absurd to ignore the desire for personal gain when assessing the motives of people who seek success in politics.
The range of the varieties of personal gain sought through political action among the political class is likely a bit wider than is the range of the varieties of personal gain sought through business action among the entrepreneurial class. The former, far more than the latter, includes the thrills that comes from public acclaim, from the exercise of power, and from honorifics such as being called “the Honorable.” But these thrills are personal gains for successful politicians no less than is monetary profit for successful business people. Further, the seeking of these thrills is evidence of politicians’ attention to their own interests no less than is the seeking of monetary gain evidence of business-peoples’ attention to their own interests.
Even if the likes of Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Marco Rubio care nothing for whatever boost their careers in politics might give to their financial fortunes, as a practical matter their pursuit of political power and influence is evidence that they are at least as ‘greedy’ as are the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Bob who owns Bob’s Lawn & Garden Service.
But as Schweizer reveals in his important book, this fact remains: real-world politicians, regardless of whatever other motives might be in the mix, shake their victims down for money.
Ultimately, votes [in the legislature] are currency and the legislature has few enough members that they can keep track of IOUs and make sure that debts are paid. If they are not, legislators who renege on their debts will be excluded from future political exchange and therefore be rendered ineffective. The less principled a legislator is, the more successful that legislator can be in the political bargaining process. The political process itself contains a selection mechanism that favors unprincipled politicians over principled ones.
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Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.
We should also bear in mind that there is no inequality so great as that between command givers and receivers.
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