Letter to the editor: People who would make the best politicians do not run

OPINION:

Elections have hit a low point in America. It has been difficult to vote in good conscience for either side. It seems that reasonable candidates get weeded out early.

Some say that the best people do not run because doing so would take a heavy toll on them and their family. With the creation of electronic media, no one can escape the hatred aimed at candidates, so it makes sense. The megalomaniacs, on the other hand, crave the attention so badly that they don’t care about the personal cost.

The election system itself corrupts even the best-intentioned politician. Think of all the lies he must tell and all the unsavory deals he has to make to get the funds needed for re-election. As President Truman said, “Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I’ll show you a crook.”

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Even if a politician sponsors bills that are intended to do good, think of how many shady deals were likely signed to get the needed votes along the way.

The other major reason why democracy and elections fail to produce great candidates is that humans have fundamentally the same brains they had 200,000 years ago. Technology have evolved enormously in that time and our minds cannot keep up.

Today, we must make much more complicated decisions, but our brains are the same as the cavemen’s. The internet gives us unlimited instant answers, we get overloaded and so we rely on what psychologists call confirmation bias (believing the answer that we already believe) or simply believe what we want to believe.

Now you know why the politician you hate keeps getting elected.

As Winston Churchill said, “[D]emocracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried … “

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LEIGHTON LOO

Mililani, Hawaii