Whittle makes a point that seems to need to be remade every couple of years. It boils down to this - there is so much money flowing through the system, so much power, that even with the best of intentions an individual charged with participating falls into the elitist mode - he or she
is elite, made so by the entire mechanism of representative government. By that mechanism, not by birth and most certainly not by any particular personal merit.
The individual who physically steers a Naval vessel isn't the Captain. He - or she - is a relatively young enlisted person who holds the wheel by virtue of assigned position. That individual has the safety of hundreds or thousands of lives and millions of dollars of property in his or her hands for the duration of the watch. They don't get to go wherever they have a whim to go, they're under command.
I use that analogy to describe representative government - maybe it only makes sense to old Navy types but that's how the thing is designed. My Senator isn't my leader, he's my representative, and he works under the command of the Constitution and the Senate's procedural rules. By my permission. And if he forgets he he's going to lose his job. Where that fails - regal seats such as Scott Brown's predecessor's come to mind - the system will fail. Slowly, perhaps, just like ship headed for the rocks. But it will get there.
