You'd Have to Be Crazy to Want to Run for Office

That's why we've got such dopey candidates
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 12, 2010 12:00 PM CDT
You'd Have to Be Crazy to Want to Run for Office
Richard Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam. Linda McMahon used to run World Wrestling Entertainment. Ladies and gentlemen of Connecticut, your 2010 candidates for US Senate!   (AP Photo/Rich Messina, Pool)

Here’s the state of politics today: In Connecticut, we have a guy who lied about serving in Vietnam running against a woman who used to run the WWE. America has, in short, a total dearth of “convincing or even plausible candidates,” and it’s easy to figure out why, writes Christopher Hitchens in Slate. “Consider: What normal person would consider risking their career and their family in order to undergo the incessant barrage of intrusive questioning about every aspect of their lives?”

And that’s just the start. There’s also “the constant pettifogging and chatter of Facebook and Twitter,” and “the treadmill of fundraising and unending tyranny of the opinion polls.” There’s the pressures of populism. “How many times can you stand in front of an audience and state: ‘I will put the people of X first’?” Politicians love this line, yet it serves only as “a confession that to you, all politics is yokel.” Thanks to all this, young, talented and intelligent people may be politically active, but “the great honor of serving their country in the legislature is only offered to them at a price that is now way too steep.” (More Election 2010 stories.)

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