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[Most of these armies of ambitious men are untalented emotionally unstable people. Running for political office is supposed to be an act of public service. Instead we’ve let it become a prize for the depraved.]

Real life is not a civics textbook. Only the independently wealthy can afford to bet their family’s well-being on a job where you don’t get promoted, and there’s no job security. When was the last time you considered running or actually ran for office? There’s reason for that.

Then there’s the fact that every skeleton in your closet - including that Klan member uncle nobody liked - gets put on display. Random strangers approach you to hurl insults. People get in your face who wouldn’t normally do so if you held a non-political job.

What about having to put your career on hold, watch your peers in the private sector climb rung upon rung, while you put your things in moving boxes after losing an election? In a way, the never-wuzzers are better off than the winners who are eventually voted out, then have to start from scratch. At least Congresscritters get to be lobbyists. What about the Town Clerk and other low key but full-time political posts?

Don’t expect politicians to be better than people in the private sector. There’s a reason politicians are reviled - we place great expectations on jobs of short duration where the officeholders are granted a great deal of power, but have to deal with great volatility in their ability to feed their families. With work conditions like that, it’s hard to get quality people, whether in terms of ability or personal character.

Without question real life is not a civics book. That's why we have to stop the little narcissists who think public office is their ticket to fame and fortune from having that opportunity. These are not the people who make the world grow and advance. Most of the time these are the people who have to be overcome in order to allow the world grow and advance.

With infrequent exception these are not the ‘brightest and the best’. Nancy Pelosi? Hillary Clinton? AOC?

My point is that the entire definition of political office as a ‘power position’ has to be turned on its head. The American Revolution was fought in part to eradicate that notion from government. We should not rest until that becomes the absolute reality.

We are living in a time during which people who have worked in the private sector their whole lives and who payed taxes and saved what they made after taxes in order to build some bit of security into their lives are losing that security because of those in public office whose politics have fueled inflation and a devaluation of their savings and assets. That has to stop.