The Corrupt Are Drawn to Power

Many are familiar with Lord Acton's remark that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. One of my daughters pointed out to me recently that Acton might not be totally wrong, and she is likely to be correct. But I think Acton got it backwards (for the most part). I believe that corrupt and self-centered people are drawn to power. In other words, they are corrupt to start with. Getting elected creates for them a field of play.  Our electoral process seeks out manipulative  power-lovers and elevates them.

Political leaders want power for the wrong reasons--there is no right reason to want power over the lives of others. Of course, all wrong reasons are not equally wrong.

At the moment,  David Brooks, a weakly pondering intellectual of the status quo, is taking on Chris Hayes of MSNBC on the question of the American meritocracy and whether it has become corrupt. What is most ludicrous about the debate is the assumption that we have a meritocracy. What sort of meritocracy would produce the paranoid Nixon, the bumbling Ford, the senile Reagan, the lecherous Clinton and the murderous dullard George W. Bush as its leaders?  We have 3,000 colleges and universities in this nation--so why is it that our "meritocracy" staffs itself mainly from Harvard, Yale and Princeton?

The central problem with our electoral system is that it insures the winners will be people seeking power over others. There is a cure for this, but I have never seen it discussed. The ancient Greeks used it in some cases. Fill our elective offices using a random lottery. Imagine ordinary citizens, women, Latinos and cross-dressers, some of whom do not want power, most of whom would not be adept at mass deception, making the decisions. They'd err. But they might not reward companies for sending jobs overseas. They might not start pointless wars.