Epsilon Wrote:I don't know where you're from, so maybe it's a country where that is true. It definitely isn't in the US, though--the last US president to face any long term consequences for his actions as president was Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and that was an assassination, not any kind of legal proceeding. (Nixon resigned much more recently, but that was for actions outside the scope of his office and certainly not much of a consequence given everything he did as president.)khagler Wrote:Not if you're a bad person, as politicians necessarily are. Then you get decisions like "Create 3 trillion dollars out of thin air to bail out politically connected companies? The inevitable bad consequences won't even be noticed until I'm safely out of office, so sure!" Or, "Murdering tens of thousands of foreigners will boost my standing in the polls among most Americans? Kill! Kill! Kill!"Those aren't reality-based decisions. They both fail to account for the long term consequences (and yes, there could be personal consequences) of their actions.
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Epsilon
robkelk, there's not really a lot of "depth" involved: being a bad person is a prerequisite to being a politician, because if you're not willing to rob and kill you can't get elected in the first place. Perhaps the source of your confusion is that you share the (sadly very widespread) belief that things that would be crimes for you and me suddenly become noble acts of statesmanship when done by politicians? I do not share that belief. As far as I'm concerned, if someone orders his men to go out and steal from people and kill any who resist, it doesn't make any difference whether his organization is called "Mafia" or "Congress."