Without anyone taking notice, we’ve become a nation with a privileged and corrupt ruling class and a permanently entrenched bureaucracy. It’s like we’ve adopted the worst elements of the British class system and the French civil service system.
I could enumerate political scandals all day long, but let’s just take the most recent one as an example. Senator Max Baucus hooked up with a staff member. He then went on to nominate her for federal prosecutor in Montana. In the meantime the woman, Melodee Hanes, was meeting with Baucus’s divorce attorney as the attorney was plotting the senator’s strategy to dump his wife.
When things started to look even too ugly for Baucus, Hanes withdrew her name for the position in Montana and slid into a job at the Justice Department. Does anyone think that her, ahem, connection with Baucus has nothing to do with her ability to get a high-paying government job?
The nation has been gleefully following the details of Tiger Woods’s infidelity. At least Woods had enough character to step away from his profession to try to put his family life back together. How often does this happen in politics? Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned, but I suspect that was more because he was involved with illegal prostitution. Had he been a garden variety adulterer, he would have probably dug in his heels like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.
There are dozens of pundits today saying that Baucus’s cheating doesn’t matter. This is the same reaction many, if not most, had when Bill Clinton was found to be an adulterer for the umpteenth time. I ask one simple question: Why do we think that politicians who have broken their vows to their wives and husbands won’t also turn their backs on their oath to uphold the constitution?
We keep returning these people to office. We have developed a class of career politicians who expect to hold office until they retire. And, on the slim chance they lose their office, they slide easily into lobbying jobs and onto boards of directors. It’s just a House of Lords by another name.
When I was younger and thinking about career paths, the predominant attitude toward government jobs was that they paid less than the private sector, but they were more secure. In other words, government workers accepted somewhat lower wages in exchange for greater job security.
In the last couple of years the number of government jobs has exploded and the average government worker now makes $70,000 per year. The average private sector worker makes $40,000 per year. With this pay differential and the security of a government job, where do you think most people are going to want to work?
How did this situation get turned upside down? Blame the new ruling class. As we become more dependent as a nation on the federal government, we are far more likely to return the same people back to Washington: congressmen and senators who won’t rock the boat and derail the gravy train, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphorical cliches. People are adverse to change, especially if their jobs depend on things remaining the same. Allow those public employees to unionize and you have a recipe for disaster.
And that’s what we have. A disaster.
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