From our overstocked archives
Sam Smith, 2006 - I reached the pinnacle of my political career when I was elected a
neighborhood commissioner. One term of this remarkably complex task
sated all further political ambition. My problem, I slowly discovered
over the years, was that while I have, run, or helped to run, such
varied things as a Coast Guard vessel, radio station, political
organizations, a band and an alternative agriculture center, I didn't
really enjoy the running part all that much. It seems that the more
power you have, the more removed you become from what attracted you in
the first place. I also found myself enjoying groups and places where no
one seemed to be running things because everyone was.
My father
liked running things along the principles set forth in Winnie the Pooh:
"It was just the day for Organizing Something, or for Writing a Notice
Signed Rabbit, or for Seeing What Everybody Else Thought About It.." My
mother, however, took an aptitude test that told her she was not likely
to do well on boards and committees. She came home and immediately
resigned from all of them. I have tried to take a more moderate
position, which is to say that I join new boards doing something
worthwhile but typically only to the point when they discover they don't
have a personnel committee, a sure sign that they are getting too
bureaucratic for my tastes.
The serious part of this ramble is
that I suspect that there are many people like myself who could do a
halfway decent job (thereby busting the curve) in politics or other
places of power but avoid them out of ADD: ambition deficit disorder.
The
guy who used to print the Review insisted that politicians should only
be allowed one term and only one office during a lifetime. This idea fit
well with one I have suggested, namely that each legislative body have a
certain number of members picked by lot in order to provide a living
benchmark. Perhaps, for starters we could have a separate house of
Congress for lottery winners and short-timers: the Recalcitrant Branch.
Our role model would be Cincinnatus who served as dictator just long
enough to defeat the Aequi - it took 16 days - and then returned to his
farm where the really serious work remained unfinished. Another model
would be Benjamin Franklin who believed one should never seek nor refuse
a public position.
I do occasionally have the fantasy that I
would make an excellent post-revolutionary leader - the sort of guy who
could cool things off, get the various factions working together, and
move from armed critique to placid programs. The problem with this
fantasy is that I would have had to have also been a revolutionary
leader to get the job in the first place, something at which I would
have been terrible. Further, a dissident faction would quickly discover
my ambivalence towards power and remove me from office either by
election or by coup and/or sudden death. At which point I quit my day
dreaming and return to my true love, writing.
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