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by TangoTrotFox 2859 days ago
The role of politicians is not based on expertise, it's to have views that are representative of their constituency.

Our system was originally designed specifically to avoid professional politicians. The initial articles of confederation included term limits. It was only removed after substantial debate. An anonymous essay penned in response to this decision suggested that people who were elected for long periods of time would become "inattentive to the public good, callous, selfish, and the fountain of corruption" continuing with,"Even good men in office, in time, imperceptibly lose sight of the people, and gradually fall into measures prejudicial to them." It's a shame they did not sign their name to the writing as I think we could label this view as fundamentally and absolutely correct. It's perhaps ironic that term limits were likely stripped from the articles not in good faith, but by those earliest 'special interests' who longed be the first professional politicians. The same interests that perhaps drove those stating truth-hoods to do so under the guise of anonymity.

And that problem is endemic to the whole system of professional politicking. Rather than focusing on 'the mission' politicians end up focusing on themselves and getting elected again. In an ideal democracy that would mean they have to work to appease the people. In reality, most of the electorate is grossly uninformed or misinformed. Generally all that matters when getting elected is money. And where does money come from? Not from the masses, it comes from special interests and top dollar donors. An issue only compounded, though not inherently caused, by the variety of ways to avoid any donation limitations such as messaging through 'independent' politician action committees.