“[T]he politician lives in a world of publicity, calumny, distortion, and insult. He is often looked down upon by police society as being a mere ‘fixer’ and an ‘opportunist’ (though it is puzzling why this last word always has a bad meaning) and he is mocked by intellectuals for rarely having ideas of his own: a politician is an arse upon/which everyone has sat except a man, which is the whole of an easy poem by E.E. Cummings. And, indeed, the politician, beneath his necessary flexibility, will rarely be a man of less than normal pliability and ambitions. He will provoke such cheap mockery from spectators. But he will not take these things to heart. The successful politician will learn how to swallow insults.”
A politician deserves scorn only when he is disloyal to his calling and fails to perform his duties as a politician. A free society has diverse interests with conflicting claims on power and the state’s attention and finances. The politician is an advocate as well as a mediator. He espouses an interest and meets with advocates of other interests to reconcile them peaceably and in an orderly way, whether in the legislature or outside. That is the only way a free society can function: by compromise, conciliation and reconciliation. It is messy, but it is unavoidable. That is life.
To be sure, the politician does not act purely from altruistic motives. He does seek power for himself. But it is a pursuit that is informed by a commitment to the public interest as well. That is what is known as “honourable ambition”, as distinct from that of the man who enters politics in order to line his pockets. The corruption of politics and the disavowal of politics form a vicious circle. Implicit in both is contempt for the political process. Read it all here
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