The Unprofessionals
Is your representative professional?
Watching tree surgeons deal with the big oak branch that's been dangling over my garage like the sword of Damocles since storm Darragh, I was reminded how much more professional some working people are than some politicians and those around them.
They told me to stay indoors for my own safety, and to close the door so I would not get sawdust in the house. They took their time looking at the problem from every angle before donning safety gear and very cautiously going about their work, careful to make sure that no part of the branch fell onto my garage roof.
Yet these are not timorous men. It takes guts to climb high in a tree, particularly one that is in an unsafe condition. It takes fortitude to do it in all weathers, and to come out whenever needed. These are what I call real professionals, unlike posturing politicians.
Many politicians are not professionals. Not that you would want them all to be members of a profession when elected - we need them to be representative, after all - but professionalism is an attitude. Politicians in a democracy should have one purpose: to benefit the people.
Politicians often do not include in their bills any way to measure the success of their measures, or funding to measure the before and after. Presumably this is so that they can claim success even when it is not justified. Good business people project the costs and benefits of any plans they may have, but not, apparently, even those politicians who say they want to run government like a business. It may sometimes be OK for entrepreneurs to gamble their own time and money on a crazy idea, but not for politicians to gamble taxpayers' money.
They often do not consider the consequences of their actions on the people.
UK
David Cameron and Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage and many others apparently gave no thought to the possible consequences of Brexit - they denied there would be any. And they are huge - over £30 billion to leave and it is costing us £9bn a year. It is expected to cost Britain £311 billion by 2035. Whole industries, sectors of the economy and segments of the population have been adversely affected (e.g. food, agriculture, musicians, young people). The list is endless.
Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, for all their qualifications, seemed totally oblivious to the effect that their disastrous mini-budget would have, and totally unrepentant when the consequences began to emerge. They also would not release the OBR's verdict. Ideology over reality is not a professional attitude.
Boris Johnson & co were totally dismissive of peoples' reactions to their Partygate antics during COVID, ignoring their own rules while forcing everyone else to keep them.
The Tories were thrashed in the last election, to be replaced by those promising change - the Labour Party, Nigel Farage's company and the Green Party all gained, though the two party system gave the lion's share of seats to Labour. But Labour does not seem all that keen to undo a lot of the damage of Brexit, for example restoring mobility in Europe for young people.
Far from working for the general welfare of the people, the Labour Party is adopting neoliberal policies and one of its first acts was to take the Winter Fuel Payment from millions of poor pensioners. They did not even do an impact assessment first. There were nearly 5,000 excess deaths due to cold and damp homes last winter. How many more will there be this winter?
Nigel Farage does not even bother to visit his constituency - he prefers to fly to the USA and hobnob with Republicans.
USA
Trump is not a professional businessman. He has bankrupted several businesses. Trump is not a professional politician. He was totally unprepared for being president - he had not even prepared an acceptance speech. He was also not prepared to do the work, preferring to play golf rather than read briefings. His attitude to national security was cavalier, to say the least. He ran the government for his own profit, not for the general welfare of the people. Somehow, his incompetence often prevented him from doing more harm than he could have, though.
The approach of Trump and those around him to the COVID pandemic was far from professional, as Thom Hartmann describes, and as a result, at least 50,000 died who need not have by the end of his presidency, with more afterwards as some people continued to believe him rather than the experts. More details here.
After the Supreme Court, corrupted by the right wing, overturned Roe V. Wade in the Dobbs decision, politicians in red states rushed to restrict or ban abortions. As a result, women have died, and over 26,000 women were forced to carry pregnancies due to rape in 16 months in Texas alone, for example. The abortion ban, substandard education and attack on transgender kids will likely cause many parents to move to other states, taking their skills and wealth with them.
Red States have also attacked education, replacing critical thinking and science (especially climate science) with the ten commandments, leading to students who are not fit for many degree courses or jobs, making the states uncompetitive. Unfortunately, while they have brought religion into schools, they have excluded Jesus (not that I advocate allowing any organised religion into schools). Their policies are the opposite of those advocated in the Sermon on the Mount or Matthew 25. And they've miscalculated and made it possible for kids to take lessons from the Satanic Temple. By denying climate science, they are not preparing for its effects such as sea level rise.
Trump may not be a professional politician, but this time round he can benefit from the planning and organising of the Heritage Foundation and other contributors to Project 2025 (as I have written before), plus the financial backing of Putin and some of the other richest men in the world. (Putin is not a professional politician either - look at how many of his people he has killed with his wars). This means that he will be able to do far more harm this time round.
His cabinet is mainly billionaires with no government experience, let alone expertise in the department they are to run. To him it does not matter, as he and his friends want to deconstruct the administrative state and grab as much money as they can (and that includes dismantling the departments and regulations that keep people safe from their excesses). But to the people it will be devastating. For example, by appointing RFK jr., measles, whooping cough and the next big pandemic could ravage the USA. Even polio could make a return.
Politicians should do good. Yet on January 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, in what became known as the Caucus Room Conspiracy, a number of Republican politicians got together and agreed to do everything they could to prevent Obama having any success whatsoever. Republicans have ensured that the current congress has been the most 'do-nothing' in history. I fear that the next congress will not be a do-nothing congress, but do a great harm congress.
First do no harm
Primum non nocere (first do no harm) is one of the principal precepts of bioethics that many politicians seem to have forgotten or been unaware of. Yet, with the power they have over everyone's lives and businesses, it should be at the heart of everything that they do, or don't do.
...you ain't wrong...my first read of your posts... Keep On...
Politician / people who run for office should be serving, not self-serving. Some people though voted for a president for entertainment value and we all will bear the consequences.
Is there an out? Could Biden find enough courage to remind people (as was noted on Thom’s show the other day) that the Supreme Court ruled to say #45 could be on the ballot in certain states and they weren’t ruling on his serving as president. If this constitutional issue were pushed, who then would serve — or self-serve — in his stead? Vance, who likely would be worse? Unprofessionals, both of them: and thus rough years are ahead for us all. Is there some other out?