I may not have made clear in my first article just how different the world of politics and the world of government really are. The difference trips up many politicians. They cultivate the skills needed for election at the expense of the more important skills needed to govern. Then, when the public ignores them, they regain attention the hard way, through scandalous conduct by an elected, appointed or employed government official for whom they are now responsible, because that’s the way government works, however remote their connection to the perpetrator may be. Government, it turns out, is what constituents elected the politician to protect them from, or at least, to impose on anyone other than their supportive voter. Experts at racing, politicians are ill-prepared for the football game they end up playing until the next election season. The world of politics is like that of television, constructed of vague collections of people that the politicians can label to their advantage. The media amplify these groups’ voices in the politician’s favor as well as their own.

 The contrasting world of government is precise, a collection of ZIP codes and Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas that make up cities, counties and states, all well defined in the law. This is the slow world of courts, trials and appeals. It is the world of enforcement and punishment. This is the world that deals with nature and its vagaries: earthquakes, forest fires, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. It is the world of war, pestilence, human drama and daily living.

Instead of self-defined constituencies, encompassing regions, amorphous metropolitan areas such as “greater New York” or popularized bodies, politicians find themselves answering, often in court, to the very people they thought that they had defeated in getting into office. Well, governing is not a horse race, and is not well covered as politics by the media — until scandalous conduct that draws viewers and readers and revenue, and which shows government as the continual cleaning up: of scandals, streets and any other public problem that people have managed to foist on the beneficiaries of government largess, which turns out too often to be only the government employees, the only ones involved who have difficulty ducking the responsibility they have. These workers have no stake in any elections, being too busy as civil servants to respond to the voters, so they sit back and let politicians claim to govern, until the inevitable accident, crime, or error that the media can hang on the current administration. The only difference the level of government makes is in the scope of the malfeasance. A national disgrace is only bigger than a state misappropriation, which may dwarf a city’s loss, but they are each a political football that needs to be passed to someone else in time to be blamed for it during the next election. 

  Then what makes politicians run? The chance to exercise power is the simplistic answer. From the local sheriff’s ability to speed around town without getting a ticket, to the President’s awesome ability to go anywhere in the world in Air Force One on a whim, the things a government official can do that an ordinary citizen can’t, are the things that make the effort apparently worthwhile. Not only that, but politicians get to set their own salaries and retirement plans, regardless of what they are worth. They look out for each other in that regard more often than not. Given an understanding with government employees about the distribution of privilege, politicians can continue to play at reelection for several terms. That’s the way amateurs become professional politicians, and it’s also the way that people learn to characterize politics and government as crooked deals. The problem is that ordinary people find governing more boring than the politicians do. So they are satisfied to let politicians deal with civil servants as long as the public gets to complain about the service.