Charles Murray has shown a division in the United States between the ordinary citizen and the “rich and/or famous” people (Murray, Coming Apart).  The latter increasingly isolate themselves, physically and in other ways, from the rest of us.  They also tend to live more extravagant lives, to the point sometimes of trampling on the “little people.”  And—the subject of this blog—the political leaders among this group are engaging more and more in not only the conduct I mentioned above, but they are making us, the taxpayer, pay for that life.  This is even as they seem to be more disconnected from their constituents.

Now of course there has always been a tendency for those in power to “lord it over” others.  After all, kings and emperors wouldn’t be kings and emperors if they didn’t act like that (not that I am condoning it).  It has just been a fact.  But in America, we haven’t usually seen the kind of celebrity status until fairly recently.  Examples abound.  Recently, Nancy Pelosi, congresswoman from San Francisco, was exposed for her ignoring of traffic laws in her hometown, as she went shopping for a new pair of shoes—and expensive pair at that.  Her prototypical black SUV runs traffic lights, blocks traffic, and double parks with impunity.  It is technically illegal, as she is definitely not on public business, but it is overlooked.  Of course we have the ongoing Bill and Hillary (Clinton) show, in which both enrich themselves while dismissing the law as being for others.  When Bill spoke at a California community college in 2012, he demanded to be flown 70 miles from San Francisco to the venue, he racked up a $1,700 phone bill for a single day, he had a $700 dinner for two, all paid by the college—by the taxpayers.  He has also charged as  much as $750,000 for a single speech, carefully crafted, with no unscreened questions afterward.  Hillary has of course received a great deal of publicity for the same thing.  The two together have hauled in over $150 million dollars since he left the White House, just from speaking engagements.  As of now, Hillary has hardly held a press conference or taken questions from an audience.  All is carefully constructed and controlled so as prevent her from encountering the hoi polloi.  I don’t want to suggest that only liberals feed at the public trough.  Conservatives do too, and increasingly so.

Beside this, our “public servants” receive ample security—while denying that we ought to have security.  They often live in gated communities.  They send their children to the most expensive private schools, while in many cases, asserting their strong opposition to any school choice.  And they sometimes live in Washington, DC without going back to their home states and districts for months or years.  One Kansas congressman hardly visited his own district for 36 years—and was finally (all too late) thrown out of office.

Worst of all, they don’t seem to hear us anymore, walled off as they are by their numerous entourages and PR people.  Now that could be good, IF we could count on them to be the wise and deliberative statesmen of the Founding Era.  They distrusted democracy to be sure, but they also seemed to grasp political theory and reality such that they wanted to promote the common good and knew how to do it.  Today I am seeing less and less of even the pretense of the desire for the common good.  It is the individual good of the politician that drives him or her.  We should have expected that.  Public Choice political scientists and economists have said for years, and correctly, that the motives of any person, whether in the private or public sector, might well be self-interested and even egoistic.  But for a long time we relied on am modicum of virtue at some level to tide us over.  But as the top of the political pyramid becomes more crowded with selfish people, we have much less confidence that the “checks and balances” so carefully worked out by our Founders will make a difference.  When everybody is in on the fix, no one else is safe.

But we do also have ourselves to blame.  Why do we continue to elect these people?  Once again, our Public Choice economists—not to mention our own Christian theology—provide the simple, but frequently overlooked, answer.  We too are self-interested.  If our own self-interest is confined to the market, no one should be too worried—we just buy more junk and baubles and no one is harmed.  But when we vote into office people whom we know will “give us goodies” we also have to accept the bad side of the bargain.  If we don’t care about political and personal virtue, we will get what we ask for, and a little more.  No institutional constraints will preserve a rule of law if no one in the institutions of politics and law gives a fig about such an “obsolete” concept.

This is a pretty pessimistic blog.  But I am not here to flatter.  I want to us to be realistic.  We should not ever underestimate the necessity of political and personal virtue.  In the end it is the glue that holds a political community together.  As important as institutions are, and I “preach” that message constantly, they will not hold up if the general environment becomes one of opportunism, cronyism and outright disdain to both the rule of law and for those whom political leaders should be representing.

But here is also one area where Christianity can come to the rescue, God willing.  As virtue cannot be coerced and mist be formed internally, Jesus Christ and the Gospel can provide the real solution by changing the hearts of people in a way that external institutions can never do.  If we can actually get to political leaders and if we can get them to listen to the truly saving message, perhaps God will mercifully grant success.  We can continue in the meantime faithfully to proclaim it and pray that it would find fertile ground.  Finally, and in addition, we should also not cease to demand accountability of our leaders.  No human leader ever ought to be free of accountability that is effective.