I have often thought that those who would choose to run for office are those we should be least inclined to elect to rule over us.

Think about it:

First, you would have to have passed your entire childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood without anything which may be considered scandalous. Now, many people do this, true. But by (until recently) excluding those who made youthful mistakes, we basically limited ourselves to those who have known they wanted to hold office ever since they were young. That is a disturbing prospect. Anyone who has been enamored of exercising power over others since early childhood scares me to death.

Second, a candidate has to enter a career which earns a lot of money to fund their early campaigns. Yet, they have to care little enough about that career to abandon it to run for a job which pays considerably less. In other words, they have to want nothing more than to hold office and see everything else as a means to obtaining office. Again, a very scary type of person.

Third, the successful candidate has to be willing to toil in the trenches and assist other candidates, and hold minor offices for a long while until their time comes. In short, they have to be willing to do whatever it takes to position themselves for their eventual run for office.

So, basically, if anyone is going to run for office, they have to have shaped their entire life with the end goal of holding office in mind. Of course, there are exceptions, people who end up in office without this past, but most office holders are not there accidentally. Most politicians have spent their whole lives thinking of nothing but running for and holding political office.

So, why is this a problem? Well, because of the old cliche "If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." If you have spent your entire life thinking of holding office, you are not likely to have done it with the goal of NOT exercising your power. Anyone that interested in politics is almost certain to see the government as the solution to any problem. Yes, some "conservatives" may want to do less and liberals may want to do more, but it is unusual for any politician to suggest doing nothing is the best response. And I think this explanation is the reason why. They have done nothing in life without a political goal, they see politics as the source of all that is good, and they really just cannot conceive of an answer that does not involve the government.

Which is why I said at the start that those who would run for office are the last ones we want to hold it.

So how to resolve this conundrum? I don't have an easy answer. As was said many times, democracy is the worst system except for all the rest. Yes, you end up with professional politicians, who tend to be overly activist, tend to act to feather their own nests, act to aggrandize themselves, take expedient courses of action with only the next election in mind, etc. But the alternatives are even worse.

Sometime, though, I do wonder if we filled offices by lot, how much worse things would be. Yes, the government would no longer be truly representative, as the outliers would sometimes get selected, and, though the odds would favor selecting people who shared the majority view, we would often end up with some who did not.

On the negative side, election by lot would obviously have no screening for competence, or even sanity. We would get truly random people, some of whom would probably do a great job, some of whom would do a dreadful job, and most of whom would just squeak by doing a poor to middling job. Also, without any continuity of administration the bureaucrats would gain even more influence. Lastly, I don't think foreign leaders would take seriously anyone selected by lot to fill an office, at least not at first. Perhaps after a few decades we would be taken seriously again, but for a long time, foreign leaders would tend to look down on our leaders (even more than they do now).

But for all the down sides of election by lot, I do see some points in its favor:

1. There would be no perpetual campaign, in fact, no campaign at all. This would be nice in that we could eliminate the unconstitutional campaign restrictions, get rid of the all the farm subsidies used to buy votes in Iowa, and a lot of other headaches campaigning brings.

2. Everyone is  a lame duck. This is nice as it means the people filling office will be able to act on their beliefs without thinking about winning any votes. And they will have even more incentive, as odds are good this is their one chance, and they will never hold office again.

3. It brings the politician back into the fold of the common man. Our politicians now form something of an elite. Lawyers already think of themselves (with little reason) as better and smarter than non-lawyers, and once they hold office they just get worse. And people let politicians get away with this. True, I think of the congressman, the governor or the president as someone like me, except who didn't have the sense to drop out of law school, and was stupid enough to leave a million dollar a year job for one paying less than half that, but most people venerate every one of them. Election by lot will put a swift end to that. When the guy down the street may be the next president, it makes the office much more approachable.

4. New skills. Right now we elect an inordinate number of lawyers. True, politics is the art of making laws, but, as they want to regulate every field of endeavor, you would think we might want some non-lawyers to hold office. Wouldn't it be nice if plumbers were regulated by a body containing at least one plumber, for example? Well, election by lot will break the stranglehold of lawyers on politics.

5. Lobbying would change. Yes, the lobbyists could still attempt to use cash, persuasion, etc to get influence over an office holder, but ti would be harder for them. Yes, these amateur politicians would probably be cheaper to bribe, but they would also be less accessible. Currently, lobbyists tend to have an "in" with certain politicians, having either served in an elective office or in the bureaucracy, or else knowing one or more politicians. Under the lottery system, there would no longer be any "ins" for lobbyists. Perhaps lobbyists would start to build up some contacts over the term of those selected by lot, but by the time the lobbyists got any purchase with a given office holder, that holder would soon be out of office and an entire new, random person would be filling the office.

6. The greatest benefit will be felt last, but will be the most important. You see, no one will be very comfortable handing unlimited power over to a bunch of people selected by lot. Sure, when it is run by celebrity lawyer/politicians, the government can bamboozle people into handing it complete control of everything, but not when your barber might be the next president. And so we get the greatest benefit of election by lot: Most people will want to drastically circumscribe the areas in which government can act. It may be impossible to rein in government today, but if we tell the man on the street we are holding a lottery to fill the congress, I guarantee there will be a general outcry to keep government out of our lives.

Given that last one, I think I may start again to press for election by lot to become the law of the land.

Corrected on 12/31/2007

I forgot to include item #5 on the list above. I had intended to include it when writing this, but simply forgot. I have restored it and renumbered the list.