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Most of them are mere politicians, charlatans, and intriguers, third-class lawyers and doctors, literary failures, semi-educated stump-speakers, bar-room, club, or clique orators, and vulgar climbers. Left behind in private careers, in which one is closely watched and accepted for what he is worth, they launch out on a public career because, in this business, popular suffrage at once ignorant, indifferent, is a badly informed, prejudiced and passionate judge and prefers a moralist of easy conscience, instead of demanding unsullied integrity and proven competency. Nothing more is demanded from candidates but witty speech-making, assertiveness and showing off in public, gross flattery, a display of enthusiasm and promises to place the power about to be conferred on them by the people in the hands of those who will serve its antipathies and prejudices.
Hippolyte Taine - The Modern Regime (1890-93)
4 comments:
Now THAT's timeless!
Our only hope is that their mediocrity in other spheres of employment keeps them on their toes as politicians. If they don't do what people demand of them, they will be out of a job and be forced to return to what they have once failed at.
Trouble is, too many of them have been successful, because making money also seems to demand little in the way of integrity, or even intelligence. Taine was writing before the Spivocracy really got going. And the other problem is that all the voting public require of them is a bribe raised from taxes, one way or another. We encourage them to be liars and cheats. It's a race to the bottom, with we the public facilitating it and cheering them on.
Shades of our good old late chum Raedwald there!
Very, very true!
Jannie - the trouble is, it probably always will be.
Sam - "It's a race to the bottom, with we the public facilitating it and cheering them on."
Yes, that's the depressing aspect and a hard landing seems increasingly likely.
Scrobs - I rarely visited his blog but yes, that's the impression of him that I remember.
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