October 22, 2005
Political realities
By Bill Kraus
Money flows to power. When Lee Dreyfus was a sure loser candidate for governor in the summer of 1978, no Political Action Committee responded to his surrogates repeated, urgent appeals for money. When he steamrolled Bob Kasten in the September primary and looked like a sure winner candidate, the phone rang off the hook, and most of the callers were from Political Action Committees offering very large sums of money.
Politicians Do Not Appoint People They Don't Like. The people the politicians beat always wonder why their favorites are not appointed to public office by the people who beat them. The politicians who appoint the people they like, on the other hand, always wonder why the people they did appoint don't do what they were expected to do in the office (particularly the judicial office) to which they were appointed.
Zealots Do Not Compromise. Zealots, true believers of every persuasion, are more sure of everything than most of us are of anything.
Politicians May Be Dumb But They Aren't Deaf. If they are voting against your wishes, they may not be listening to you, but they are listening to someone.
And, of course, We Get the Government We Deserve. We may not like the people who are running our government, if a recent poll is accurate, but, if so, we brought it on ourselves. Either by electing the wrong people or, even more likely, by letting other people elect the wrong people while we sat by and idly watched.
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