In a recent common in which she attempted to dissuade W. Lane Startin from running for Governor of Idaho as a Democrat, Julie Fanselow writes:
As I wrote the other day, public service is about being humble (to some degree, anyway; clearly, most politicians have to have healthy egos or they wouldn’t succeed)…
About two months ago, another young man (a little older than you) with scant political experience approached me about running for governor as a Dem in 2010. I told him the very same thing: Start lower. Pay your dues. Build your credibility. I suspect Wendy J will say something similar to you.
First of all, humility doesn’t mean underselling yourself. If you’re qualified to be an attorney in a law office, it doesn’t show humility to apply to be a legal secretary. There’s nothing un-humble about applying for a job you can do and are qualified for.
Second, pay your dues? The phrase has stuck with me. To whom are the dues being paid? To voters? To party bosses?
This has been something that’s been said or inferred in John Cox’s presidential campaign as well, people have basically been saying, “Pay your dues.” The $100,000 in support to Republican Organizations doesn’t count.
Perhaps the dues paying mentality is part of what’s wrong with politics. The reason we don’t have great presidents or great governors in as high a number as we’d like is that running for these offices is not something you do to fulfill a service, but rather a lifetime career of glad-handing.
I think about some of the Dues Paying Candidates we’ve had-Bob Dole (R-Ks.). The guy was a good man, didn’t have much clue what he really wanted to do as President, couldn’t inspire many people, but boy there was somebody who paid their dues.
Then of course, Rudy Giuliani has “paid his dues.” He served two terms as Mayor of New York, and raised money for tons of Republicans, many of whom have come out to support him.
Mitt Romney has paid his dues, though in lesser amounts. Certainly, Hillary and Bill have paid their dues.
And thus we end up with a professional politician class, members of the club who pay their dues and wait for the chance to advance, rather than being the sort who run to do a good job for the people.
If someone has some good ideas on ways to change our state and make it better that can best be executed for the Governor’s mansion, I say go for it. If you’ve got ideas that have got to be executed for the Presidency, go for it. I don’t care what your experience as a political leader is. America was never intended to be governed by two competing oligarchal clubs. It’s about merit.
And of course, it should also be noted that some people don’t “pay their dues” and seem to get away with it. Examples:
Bill Clinton didn’t get any service in the legislature in, and in 1976 *boom*, he’s Attorney General of the State of Arkansas. The current President Bush had won no political office when he was elected Governor of the third largest state in the nation. The last two Presidents have gotten to skip a bunch of steps on the dues paying ladder, yet somehow the “Pay Your Dues” folks expect everyone else to go ahead and do it. If you think Clinton shouldn’t have been elected because he didn’t pay his dues, what about Bush? If you think Bush shouldn’t have been elected because he didn’t pay his dues, what about Clinton? You can find dozens of people who started at a point rather than the bottom (Al Gore, Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan.)
How about instead of getting people elected to the State Legislature on their road to becoming President or Governor, we just get people elected who want to do the job they’re running for to the best of their ability with no thought of future ambition? I’d much prefer that than having members of the legislature who are worrying about ticking off some special interest they think they’ll need when they run for statewide office down the line.
