Just What Does it Take to Run the Office These Days?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Most people who have actual, real jobs would find it hard to abandon their work for a couple of months, unless given an official leave of absence and being replaced temporarily by someone else.

How many teachers, lawyers, garage mechanics, barbers, insurance salespeople, and, for that matter, professors, could just take time off from work, without their disappearance having an effect on others in their workplace?

But Sarah Palin has been on the road, running as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, since August. So who’s minding the store up in Alaska? She is, after all, the governor – the chief executive officer, the CEO, of the state.

Barack Obama, John McCain and Joe Biden, are senators, members of the legislative branch, the Congress, so this question doesn’t apply to them. Indeed, Congress isn’t even in session right now.

Sure, Palin may be signing off on bills, but how different is this from Queen Elizabeth giving the royal assent to legislation passed by the British Parliament?

The fact that Palin’s absence in the state makes little difference tells us something about the dirty little secret of modern politics, especially as practiced in America today. Many political figures today are really just “fronts,” people placed on their parties’ tickets as a result of their “electability” or “persona,” and thus the recipients of large amounts of cash from donors, who in return hope for policy decisions that will favour them.

The elected officials don’t actually do the work. They are not all that different from British aristocrats who, until the practice was abolished in 1868, bought army commissions for their sons, and expected others in the military to do the actual thinking when it came to warfare.

At least Biden and Obama attended law school, while McCain was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and an officer in the Navy. Palin barely managed to obtain a BA from the University of Idaho. She seems to use the word “maverick” as a synonym for being unlettered.

It was not always this way. When Abraham Lincoln ran for president in 1860, the voters expected him to really do the job. Honest Abe didn’t have a whole staff around him for the heavy lifting.

He wrote the “Gettysburg Address” himself, and didn’t use focus groups to see if it would be well received. Today, of course, presidents have speech writers, media consultants, analysts, strategists, and hundreds of other specialists at their side.

This is why the charges of “plagiarism” levelled against a politician when someone discovers they have lifted parts of another official’s speech fall flat. After all, it’s just one ghost writer stealing from another! None of this stuff is actually written by the candidates.

Just imagine, using my own job as an example, if this were the case in other walks of life:

Competing with others for a university position, I am selected by (and only by) the “electorate,” in other words the student body, for reasons best known only to themselves. And they have absolute control of the process; none of the faculty or administrators can veto their decision.

My specialty is comparative politics, and perhaps I’m not really up to speed in my field. But that doesn’t really matter. I’ll simply hire genuine political scientists to prepare my course syllabi, write my lectures, mark exams and term papers, and do all of my scholarly research and writing, up to and including the books that I will publish. And I get all the credit.

Not a bad gig, eh? Welcome to the world of 21st century democracy, where image is all and expertise comes a distant second.

That’s why the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on new clothes for Sarah Palin, rather than on books. Too bad -- she might have learned what the position of vice-president of the United States really entails.