Into politics? Thinking about making a run for office? Let’s talk about this. The left needs serious discussions on whether and how to win power electorally.
I’ll get directly to the point. All things being equal, running for office is a bad idea. I’ll say a bit about why. Along the way, I’ll make some recommendations for what to do about this.
The background to this post is that there’s a special election for a vacant city council seat in Iowa City. I live in Iowa City, and I’ve spent some time evaluating whether running for office here might be a good use of time. The city council, in particular, appears like it might be an outlet one could use for positive results.
Despite the obvious localism, I’ll draw out broader implications.
General Reasons not to Run for Office
1. Pay attention to power.
Lyndon Johnson once said that “power is where power goes.” The idea is that power resides not in offices, but in individual politicians. Politicians bring power to offices. This was shortly before he was elected Vice President, the most worthless office in American politics. After he won the election, Johnson discovered quickly just how wrong he was.
Let’s say you’re thinking about making a run for an elected political office. Any office. These questions are a great place to start: What power does this office have? What can I accomplish by holding this office? If the office doesn’t have power, can I bring power to it?
For the city council of Iowa City, the answers are: very little, probably not much, and probably not.
Other offices may vary, though political offices tend to have far less power than people think. Seats in Congress, mayoral positions, etc. have surprisingly little. One’s ability to bring power to any of these office is usually very limited.
The city councilors of Iowa City serve in a part-time capacity. They make about $7,000 per year. The office is not designed to be a hands-on, full-time position. It’s mostly designed for citizen-legislators who are already wealthy, retired, or hard at work in a full-time position elsewhere. It doesn’t afford a great deal of time and effort.
Iowa City vests power primarily in the city manager and city commissions. City councilors see largely finished proposals that have already been worked out by commissions and business interests. They have little authority to do anything other than rubber-stamp or say “no” to someone else’s work.
To expand the office’s power probably requires turning it into a well-paid, full-time position. The city would probably need to either reduce the power of the commissions or combine it with the power of the city council (i.e., councilors directly serving on the commissions). There shouldn’t be a city manager at all. At a minimum, the city should severely restrict the scope, power, and authority of the position. The position is, by definition, technocratic and anti-democratic.
2. Electoral politics are not an effective avenue for change.
I’ve covered this one before. But it bears repeating. Organizing around material interests is the primary avenue for change. Electing hero-legislators is not. Running for office isn’t incompatible with organizing around material interests. Plenty of officeholders have done so. But few officeholders link the two things together in an effective way.
The best kind of electoral campaign is an alliance between grassroots organizations and a candidate. The grassroots organizations, not the candidate, direct the priorities and the interests. The candidate is competent, but almost an afterthought. Such a campaign might be worth building if the opportunity is right. But it would likely work only after doing a great deal of non-electoral work.
3. You’ll get burned out and frustrated.
The political officeholders who really want to do good in the world get burned out and frustrated very quickly. They enter office with big ideas, but the most perceptive among them see that there are few opportunities to implement those ideas. They deal with this frustration in a variety of ways: dogged optimism, denial, cynicism, or resignation to one’s fate. But deal with it they must.
Personal Reasons Not to Run for Office
4. You’ll get loads of unwanted public attention.
I couldn’t resist saying a bit about why I’ve never run for office myself. I don’t believe in false modesty. If I’ve got a set of skills, I’ll say it. As far as elected office goes, I’d be a good legislator. It requires certain skills in analytical thought and persuasion that I possess. I’d do at least as good a job as the current city councilors and anyone who has run for office during my time in Iowa City. But I’m not going to do it. Some of this is because of the three reasons above, but also…
If you run for office, people are going to be talking about you. A lot. They’ll dissect everything you say and do. You’ll have limited privacy. You’ll get slandered and libeled. Your name will be in the paper for both good and bad reasons.
I find all of this appalling, as I’ve said before. I don’t need to have my name in the paper or be a household name. My personal life is none of anyone’s business but mine. I don’t want everyone up in my shit. I don’t have anything to hide, but I’m also not comfortable with the attention. I’d rather get things done in much quieter and more effective ways. If you’re someone who does want the attention, I find that puzzling and suspicious.
5. I don’t have the special blend of ego and naivety it takes to be a politician.
I have friends and acquaintances who have run for office and/or currently hold office. They’re good people trying to do good things. I don’t want to bash them.
Nevertheless, there are patterns with politicians in general. Most politicians possess a special blend of ego and naivety. It varies in proportion, but both elements are there in some form.
The ego part is clear enough. Electoral politics draw those who revel in the public attention. Many want to be in the paper, on TV, and on the Internet. Politics is a helluva drug for some. For politicians who don’t have the ego for it (and there are some), it’s a painful experience.
The naivety part is less clear, and so I’ll say more about it. Electoral politics draw those who believe in their own ability to get things done with the offices they seek. To some extent, this is good. We should have confidence in our abilities, especially those who have been told by society not to have confidence.
But people should temper this confidence with point (1) above. Work to expand the range of what your office can do. Before that, though, know how much power resides in the office in the first place. Electoral politics is a helluva drug for those whose estimation of their abilities is much higher than the power that resides in the office. What results, especially for the most sincere officeholders, is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
6. I wouldn’t win.
Every political candidate should conduct a frank assessment of their likelihood of success or failure. Granted, winning isn’t everything. Sometimes you run because you have an issue you want to advocate for. You can use a good political campaign to bolster or build a broader grassroots movement. It’s rarely done, even among the candidates who think they’re doing it. But it’s possible.
However, even this is no excuse for lacking some degree of realism. Looking at Iowa campaigns such as Cathy Glasson’s, I get the impression that many candidates, especially those further to the left, drastically overestimate their potential to win. And when these campaigns lose, they rarely have a broader movement-building strategy.
For me, personally, I’d probably lose. My politics are a combination of communism and anarchism. I’m not going to hide this to get elected to office. I’d like to at least think I can talk about radical political ideas in a way that makes sense to people who aren’t already on the team. But I’d also proudly march behind the black and red.
As a campaign strategy, this is basically suicidal. Probably even in the so-called People’s Republic of Johnson County.
Conclusion
I’m not your boss, and I’m not in the business of telling you what to do (see also: anarcho-communism). If you want to run for office, go for it. I always vote in local elections. If you’re running a good campaign with a good platform, I’ll vote for you. I probably won’t campaign for you, but that’s because of my own estimation of the power and potential of electoral politics.
I started this post by saying that, all things being equal, running for office is a bad idea. Well, all things aren’t always equal. Sometimes you think you see an opportunity. Sometimes that opportunity is real. We all have to work to gain the perceptiveness required to see opportunities and the wisdom required to judge when they’re real.
If nothing else, take measure of the reasons not to run. Where do you fit in here? Does the office you seek have any power? Can you bring power to it or expand its power? How would you handle a personal or political scandal? Do you have the right connections to grassroots organizations to bring pressure to bear? Can you effectively deflect attention from yourself and to the issues that are important?
