Little Brucoe knows exactly why politicians do what they do. They want to hug him because he’s so cute.
For those who have been following the exploits of New York politicians, specifically one who seems to text graphic pictures of his private parts to random women and the other who was laughed out of office for paying for high priced hookers, it leaves one wondering how either one of these individuals actually thinks he has a chance in hell of ever regaining a political career. Senator Barbara Boxer mentioned yesterday that Warner needed to drop out of the race, and chances are pretty good that even though the highest ranking Democrat (his party) wants him out, he’s probably not going to comply.
Which leaves one wondering how they can actually imagine they have a chance of serving their constituents again. Critics of these two have been making statements about how both are incapable of providing their constituents with service, yet neither one of them seems all that concerned about the criticism. Sure, they don’t like that they’re being criticized, but at the same time they’re not planning to go away any time soon.
This leaves me wondering how this fits into the greater schemes of political science itself, and by that, I mean how does this make any sense to the central axiom of American government theory, which is that politicians do everything they do in hopes of being elected and re-elected. Everything else is irrelevant. If this were the case, then we should expect that one of them wouldn’t have pursued expensive hookers while the other one would stop sending pictures of his cock to random women. Or at least stay faithful to his wife, who happens to be an insider with the Clintons. But instead, we keep getting very interesting, and titillating stories from these two.
And they’re not the only ones. The mayor of San Diego seems to have a problem dealing with just about any woman he comes across without looking for a hook up from her. If he followed the central axiom of political theory, then he’d stop trying to score with every woman he comes across. But that hasn’t happened. He won’t resign either, because he doesn’t seem to think it’s a detriment to his serving in office.
Which brings me to something I brought up a long time ago while pursuing my doctorate in political science. It was understandably laughed at back then, and probably will be again, but a colleague and I came up with this joke of a theory that perhaps the central axiom of political theory is not incorrect, but that it isn’t finished. If you follow the logic, you would come to the conclusion that politicians want to be elected and re-elected after being in office. The theory my colleague and I played around with was essentially the next step. If they get elected, so what? What does that lead them to? Does serving in office give you the ultimate satisfaction you’ve been seeking all your life? Or does it allow you to provide for satisfaction because of the results of that office?
Let’s explore that. Our theory was a joke back then, which I’ll mention now and then get back to seriousness. We postulated that the reason why politicians do what they do is not to become re-elected, but to get dates. In other words, the reason they do what they do is to appeal to the opposite sex (or same sex if that’s their thing). When they score, they have effectively achieved all that they have sought out to do.
Yes, it was a joke, and no one took us seriously. But what if it was somewhat true? What if the reason why politicians did what they do is to achieve some ultimate goal? For some, like the ones mentioned in this article, maybe it is about getting dates or appealing to the opposite sex. For others, perhaps the end goal is power. And for even more, perhaps it is the accumulation of wealth. We’ve seen over and over again that people in power are easily corrupted in the end, even if we don’t always know what it is that’s going to corrupt them.
So, the bigger question that should be asked is what exactly is it that a particular politician seeks as an ultimate result. If it’s sex, then we look for that arena. If it’s money, then we should expect just that. And so on. The point is: If this theory is correct, then perhaps our motivations we put behind political science are a bit premature, in that they lead to something, but they aren’t the thing that actually point the final finger. An example is a politician who is leaving office after a set of years having served. Political scientists tend to ignore the individual from this point on, figuring they’re nothing more than a lame duck and not worthy of further exploration. But my theory looks at them as even yet another variable that needs to be studied, because something caused them to realize that politics was no longer worth their effort. It’s all an end game sum type of situation where there are intricate cost-benefit analyses being played out before our eyes. Sometimes, we can see it clearly, as we can see when a politician is outed for some behavior that goes contrary to stated intentions. Other times, it’s not so easy to see.
But studying politics from this direction means we might actually start to find the true motivations behind why politicians do what they do. This is what the intelligence services have done for as long as there have been administrators. They find out what the person really wants and then provide that for them. That usually leads to the beginning of a long, lasting relationship. But they’d never have succeeded if they went into the situation convinced that all administrators do what they do because they’re interested in keeping their job tomorrow. Yet, that’s exactly how political theory deals with this issue. If you think it through, that’s exactly what we do.
Anyway, so from now on I think I’ll be looking at politics from the angle of “what’s in it for me” or for the politician himself/herself. What I suspect I’ll find is that the answers aren’t that much different from the expectations. What I do believe I’ll find, however, is that we might stop being so stubborn about actually studying the real reasons why people actually do what they do.