Politicians and Public Servants

Yesterday, Arlen Specter (?-PA) made big news by announcing that he will run as a Democrat in his bid for re-election to the Senate in 2010. I consider this to be pretty big news - we don't see politicians switching parties that frequently. This is likely to give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (assuming Al Franken is seated as Senator of Minnesota). I would not be terribly surprised to see Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and/or Susan Collins (R-ME) switch affiliations at some point either. Apparently, Harry Reid (D-NV) has been working on Specter for a few years.

At some point in the future, I will get around to finishing my analysis of the voting patterns of members of Congress. I have not forgotten this project. In fact, I made good progress on it late last year before other items distracted my progress. It will be interesting to see where Specter rates in this analysis.

However, the point of this post is not to analyze the impact of this affiliation switch. Instead, I think this provides a good opportunity to point out the priorities of politicians and public servants.

I see politicians and public servants as two very different characters. A few weeks back, I introduced my pyramid of governance. Today, I introduce the pyramid of the political priority:

This graphic simply represents the order of priorities for the politician and the public servant. First, let's discuss the priorities of the politician. It should come as no surprise that the politician puts self above all. Arlen Specter made this clear yesterday. He did not try to hide the fact that one of the driving factors (and, frankly, it is clearly the number one driving factor) in his decision to switch parties was his ability to win his re-election bid. Specter is not alone. Indeed most people holding government jobs are looking out for self above all else.

After looking out for number one, the politician's next priority is party. It should be abundantly clear that party affiliation is central to the American political system. Very few individuals who seek public office have success running as independents. This may, on the surface, indicate that politicians may even put party ahead of self. Indeed this thought has crossed my mind before. For example, if Hillary Clinton truly thought she was the best candidate for President, then why not run as an independent? While this would be a clear example of placing self over party, it should be understood that if she had chosen this path, it would have put her own political future at risk. She was still looking out for number one. (Notably, successfully running as an independent or third-party candidate in the United States is a monumental challenge due to ballot-access laws, campaign finance laws, the government-media complex, and a host of other reasons.)

The constituency comes next. Yes. Party and self come before the constituency for the politician. In fact, the constituency is only important to the politician because of elections. Serving the interests of the constituency is simply a means to an end - and that end is winning the next election to stay in power. The political party duopoly has engineered the constituencies of the House of Representatives through gerrymandering over the years so that serving party and self is easier to do without significant risk of consequence from the constituency.

The final priority for the politician is the Rule of Law. This is most unfortunate. If the politician has enough power and does not respect the Rule of Law, then the Rule of Law itself is at risk. When this is compromised, then law is essentially arbitrary. Politicians have breached this boundary in the United States. They have argued for decades for a flexible interpretation of constitutional powers. This has been successfully done both at the federal and state level and across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

As the pyramid above indicates, the public servant has priorities in the exact opposite order of the politician. The public servant realizes that the Rule of Law comes before everything else. This is reflected by the oaths of office taken by government officials who swear to uphold and defend the Constitution. Once the Rule of Law has been breached, then there is no limit on the politician. The public servant understands this and recognizes that the Rule of Law must be upheld even if it against the wishes of the constituency.

This leads us to the public servant's next priority: the constituency. This should be straightforward and is the essence of the term "public servant" - one who serves the public. It may be argued that self should come before party for the public servant. This is a reasonable argument; however, a party which recognizes the Rule of Law as a priority over political power should reasonably come ahead of any individual interest. Regardless of this detail, both party and self are almost a moot point when the Rule of Law and the constituency are served.

It is unreasonable to expect public officials to be ideal public servants in all cases rather than politicians. After all, it is human nature to put self above all other priorities. This is an inherent issue with any structure of governance which underscores the need for adherence and enforcement of the Rule of Law. Unfortunately, public servants are few and far between as our system has evolved to favor politicians above all else. That is the order of the day and will lead to the destruction of this nation.