Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (65939)	11/5/2002 2:42:42 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

I'll match my bunch of thugs against your bunch of thugs any day! Actually, I won't. Washington (the state, not the swamp) politics tends to be fairly clean and honorable, at least compared to other states. But still, I stick to my basic principle that anybody who wants to run for public office and is willing to put up with what it takes to get elected is by definition unqualified to hold the office. The higher we go, the more this is true. In local elections, it's possible for candidates to retain their integrity and honesty. But the higher they go, the more money they need, the more favors they have to promise or imply to get it, the worse it gets. I think I've mentioned before that about fifteen years ago my best friend, my business partner at the time, got appointed to the state legislature. It changed him totally, in ways that were not for the better. Obviously, I used to see him daily back then. Now, we haven't communicated for several years. He's down in Olympia, in a government job there (he didn't get re-elected, but the connections he made during his stint got him in a nice job), he never comes back up here (his wife divorced him when he went down there), and he has no time for an old friend who can never be of any use to him politically. Just this year another friend of mine, a man I worked closely with as officers of a local charity, a man I used to lunch with regularly, decided to run for Congress. (He had a background in D.C., but had never held elected office.) I wasn't ready to support him politically (he was a close associate of Reagan, which tells you where his politics were), and so zap, I was no longer of any interest to him. We haven't lunched since his announcement of his candidancy -- he's too busy raising money, meeting people who can help his campaign, to waste time on old, now cast-off, friends. The game changes people. There's no getting aroound it. And I don't think it changes them for the better. So I'm not surprised if people think your bunch of candidates are all thugs. They probably aren't in reality, but they probably do act that way because they feel they have to.