Some people, mostly on the right., bemoan “career” politicians and advocate for term limits.
Not me. I want professional politicians in key offices. I know this will grate on some people, so let me explain.
First, arguing that “career” politicians are mucking things up is a ruse. These people are really complaining about policies they disagree with. They’re not against their own long-serving politicians — after all, they re-elect them — but only the leaders on the other side.
Second, I want experienced and knowledgeable people running our government, not rank amateurs. Recently we’ve gotten a good look at what happens when voters send a gym owner (Greene) or a restaurant owner (Boebert) who know nothing about budgets or policies, and lack governing skills, to Congress.
They may be relative rarities (thank God), but the concept of the citizen-legislator is alive and well in state legislatures, many of which are deliberately part-time (so it won’t be a job, and so legislators can own businesses or work at real-economy jobs on the side, which is supposed to make them more representative of the communities and constituents they represent).
How well is this working out? The results are mixed. Sometimes these part-time citizen-legislators are okay, and get better as they learn the political trade, but you also get amateur politicians like Nathan Wesenberg, elected to the Minnesota state senate in 2022, whose day job is wildlife biologist (see his profile here).
Wesenberg is as raw as they come. When three teachers met with him to lobby for more special education funding, he accused them of “teaching kids to be gay and to hate white people,” and threw them out of his office (see story here). According to the teachers, he blew up when told they belong to a teachers union.
Which brings me to my third point: Political office is a job that requires specific skills, like any other vocation. A legislator represents all his constituents, including those who didn’t vote for him. Part of the job is listening to constituents; how can you represent them, if you don’t? It also would be nice if legislation was based on facts (let’s call it “reality”) and thoughtful analysis.
As with anything else, there’s a learning curve, and Wesenberg is at the very start of his. But ideally candidates bring something to the table to start with, otherwise you don’t elect them. None of that describes Wesenberg. Instead, according to the teachers, he “echoed themes often heard on right-wing talk radio and Fox News.” In a discussion, mind you, about the state’s education budget, and specifically a local school district’s special education needs.
Wesenberg’s conduct wasn’t inevitable simply because he’s a conservative Republican. A total lack of political skills, not party affiliation, is behind his meltdown. Raw Story says (at link above), “After their meeting with Wesenberg, the teachers met with another local lawmaker, Rep. Isaac Schultz, R-Elmdale Township, for about 40 minutes. The teachers said Schultz indicated he also wouldn’t be voting for the education budget bill, though Wenner] said Schultz listened, asked questions and ‘was very cordial.’” Wenner, a math teacher, says Wesenberg accused him of teaching “pornography” to his students.
A final point I keep harping on in this blog is that while America is a free country, and voters can elect anyone they like, citizens have duties and responsibilities (e.g., paying taxes, serving in the military, obeying laws, etc.), and it’s reasonable to expect people to vote responsibly, i.e. for qualified candidates.
Professional politicians exist on both sides of the partisan aisle. There are Republicans and Democrats in Congress, legislatures, and statehouses who are pros, and though you may disagree with their policy stances and votes on legislation, they know how to do the job — and no part of the job is more important than listening to constituents. They are the intermediaries between the public and what happens in legislative chambers, and if they don’t listen, that breaks the connection between citizens and their government, and leaves citizens powerless to influence their government’s actions.
What Wesenberg did is political incompetence. By all indications, this man has no political skills. He doesn’t listen to citizens, and he’s grounded in false propaganda and conspiracy theories, so how can he possibly legislate responsibly? When an employee screws up in any other job, he gets sent to extra training. Hopefully party leaders will take Wesenberg aside, explain to him what he did wrong, how to do it right, and he’ll learn some political skills and grow into the job.
He’d better learn fast, because he’s starting in a deep hole, and it’s a long climb out. Otherwise, his constituents should exercise their option to term-limit him in the next election. Whatever their ideological leaning is, this kind of representation doesn’t serve them well. In this case, it’s their schools and children that will suffer from their representative’s inability to learn anything from teachers about the schools’ budgetary needs.