This is my political hero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_the_Year_(2006_film)

Jimmy Carter

Tommy Douglas, but this isn't a raise-the-dead test, is it? Even so, even distracted by his hunger for human flesh, a zombie Tommy Douglas would be more intelligent than Bush and more personable than Cheney.

Plus he's Jack Bauer's grandfather, for chrissake.

Chuck Hagel, Arlen Spector, Connie Morella...

By in large, I find that most of the politicians I've actually followed are generally trustworthy. I'll also add that many of the charges of "violation of trust" that are tossed around a lot come from folks who aren't really familiar with the give-and-take nature of politics. Politicians don't, by nature, get everything on their agenda. And comprimise does not make one corrupt, though there are plenty examples of real corruption around for those who want to find them (eg: Jefferson, DeLay, Cunningham).

I find it pretty distressing that we, as Americans, hold our government in such low regard and yet spend so much effort looking for messianic candidates. It demonstrates a pretty dimwitted and unsophisticated understanding of what it takes to run a country.

Half the problem with American politics is that the public is infected with the romantic mythology of the heroic outsider. It's exactly this sort of crap that leads to our electing know-nothing ideologues that end up either fcuking things up out of ignorance, being manipulated by baser advisors, or both.

We'd be a lot better off if people took the time to educate themselves and then vote for professionals who look after their interests.

I looked at this thread and wondered why the question was phrased this way. I think it's cynical and unfair. The better question is, at what point do you decide a politician is untrustworthy?

If we, as Americans, lose all faith in our leaders as a class, we've lost the uniquely American relationship to our government that separates ours from other systems. When government is the enemy, America is the enemy. We have the mechanisms to fix the problems of our government, but when we turn away from them, we give up on the founding principles of the United States - government by the people, of the people and for the people.

We are the government, ultimately, and disengaging from it, or attacking it, because of a feeling that there's nothing we can do about corruption and malfeasance is very bad citizenship.

Yup. Everyone has a right to complain in this country, but the cynical lumping in of all politicians as a corrupt or untrustworthy class is an exercise in pretty poor citizenship. It serves no purpose other than to divorce the individual of his or her very real responsibility as a citizen to become educated and participate in a meaningful manner with the mechanism of government.

It is a tremendous priviledge to live in the United States and part of that priviledge is the fact that we are citizens and not subjects. If we ignore our responsibilities (and general victim mentality btching is just another way of shirking responsibility), that distinction loses its significance.

My best suggestion on this would be to find a way to get involved in politics yourself at the local level. Work a campaign for a city councilman or county sheriff. Then, after they get elected (or not) follow the local issues and see how they impact you most directly. This will motivate you to get involved with grassroots campaigns in non-election years (where, btw, all the real decisions are made).

This does a number of different things. One, it empowers you as a citizen since it gives you a voice many times that of the uninvolved citizen. That empowerment will put the German suplex on your cynicism. Even when you are involved in a losing campaign (after the initial bummer of losing), you find yourself much more empowered by the process -- if for no other reason than the fact that the winning candidate is aware of the issues that are important to you. The second thing it does is educates you to the process of government. Politics is the art of the possible, not the display case of inflexible ideals. People complain about the sausagemaking nature of politics, but everyone likes a good bratwurst. Folks want the streets cleaned, the neighborhood safe, and your selfish and annoying neighbor's dog leashed, but few folks either accept or even make an attempt to understand the process of comprimise necessary just to make communal habitation possible. Trust me, knowing what politicians do will give you a much healthier respect for how they do it.

Finally, after you get a better idea of how the process works, don't be afraid to join in the fray. If you think you can do better than your "Congress critter", use the knowledge you have gained from your experience in local campaigns to run one of your own. Like I said before, even if you lose, your voice will be many times that of the whining complainer who sits around and says that "all politicians are corrupt".

My own personal preference is for professional politicians. I know that goes against the current orthodoxy, but I really think that the myth of the romantic outsider is way overplayed. I think that the process benefits from newcomers and new ideas, but I also think that the process also requires institutional knowledge as well. Given the choice between the firey "reform" guy who has no idea how the system works and the seasoned bureaucrat who knows where bodies are buried, I'll take Senator Undertaker to represent my interests.

Perhaps its me Paleo and I read into this. I was under the impression that the thread at the national level which is my area of disillusionment. On the local level I feel my involvement does make a difference and I have been involved. On the national level, it looks like a pile of crap to me.

It's rare in our history that a particular class of politicians (ie, those who came up within a small number of years, in this case the Nixon presidency) actually goes beyond pushing their agenda into criminal manipulation of the system. I look at the people associated with the Neocons and I see this has come back into play. Just like Tammany Hall, there's an association of like-minded people who have and continue to abuse the system in a way that renders their beliefs unimportant. I believe these folks are a special case, defined by the willingness to set their political agenda above the law.

That does not indict all other politicians, of course. They stand out because they are different.

The last congressman I met from my district is now in prison. A hell of great guy to talk to and did a lot of fighting for the people of the area and a lot good. So well loved in this area that he got a ton of votes while in prison. But he is still in prison, still a criminal. Still not getting my faith. But you guys are free to visit him in the big house and tell me I'm the one with the problem not him. But what am I, the honest tax payer that looks out for his family and nieghbor doing no one else any harm. I'll go home to night and tell my wife what a horrible person I am dragging down the country because politicians are corrupt and I haven't taken any to lunch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Traficant

Funnily enough, 1Dgaf, I have the same conversation every so often. The subset of politicians I trust to do what they believe in, even if it is not politically expedient at that moment, is pretty thin. Tony Benn is certainly one of mine, and I've been a fan ever since I heard how a Viscount took himself off the civil list because he believed in socialism. Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson are two others that I trust to keep their word, even if Boris would probably fall down an open manhole on the way to parliament. I've got a lot of time for Ken Clarke, and I had a lot of respect for Robin Cook.

On a personal note, my own disillusionment with politics crystallised when there was a highly unpopular housing development near where I work (Romsey). A lovely meadow, protected species of newt, all that stuff. The developers wanted to dump 100 new houses in a small town, but without adding any more schools, shops, pubs, Naturally, the developers had greased the right palms and it was going through. However, an upcoming council election held possibilities. A candidate stood on a no housing development ticket, loudly proclaiming he would stop it going through if elected. Well, you can guess the rest.

The only thing 99.9% of politicians believe in is getting reelected. They are not held accountable by the electorate for going back on their word, ignoring manifesto pledges, or putting the country into biblical wars for patently made-up reasons. Even though I never vote for a peron again if they do any of these things, all the drones in my constituency seem to base their vote on is how someone looks on the telly, and whether they seem like a nice person or not. I have more respect for the other candidates at the last elections, Arthur Pendragon, a Druid of the Sword ("The independent candidate for the independent thinker"), and Derrick Large the Legalize Cannabis campaigner ("Would you like to Go Large?") than the usual shower the big three trot out.

I was under the impression that the massive economic recession was the major factor in that defeat. In any case, I can find a lot of counterexamples in the UK to do with going into Iraq in 2003. The most egregious of these is the famous "45 minute" claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes. Blair has hotly protested that this was his lie by shifting the blame onto other people, or by trying to get out of it by redefining what the word "lie" actually means in that context. I think it would be true that most people in the UK believe that Blair wanted to go to war and then told the intelligence services to get evidence for him to justify the action. But he still got reelected in 2005, albeit against an even more notorious slippery politician, Michael Howard. Coming back to your example about Bush Snr., I think it is fair to say that politicians in both the US and UK took heed of the "read my lips... no new taxes" thing as a salutary lesson and now simply don't make hard promises like that any more. I think it's a lot harder to catch politicians in outright lies since then. Could I use Clinton as a counterexample too? That sexual relations line can't have fooled anyone over there, surely?

As an aside, I consider the noun "democracy" to be as far from the adjectives "sublime" and "beautiful" as it is possible to be. It happens to be slightly better than all the alternatives anyone has ever come up with, but that still doesn't mean I have to admire it.

To me, the biggest problem is the perpetual need for fund raising. Out of necessity, our representatives must have huge war chests to run, which means they have spend a lot of time raising money, opening themselves up to some pretty tenuous situations. Only until recently did I vehemently oppose public financing of elections, but I'm now open to the idea. I'm not for it just yet, but the idea makes sense. I can't quite align this with freedom of speech during elections, but surely there's a middle ground that can be struck.

If Congress-folks could actually govern while elected instead of continuous bake sales to pharmacutecal companies, maybe my cynicism would decrease....or maybe not. As it is, conflicts of interest abound and create the majority of scumminess that makes our government so hard to sympathize with.