The comments I'm getting about whether Congressmen are underpaid are why I was glad to leave politics behind a long time ago, and why two of the three politicians I worked for eventually quit politics in disgust after successful runs as popular and securely elected officials. /1
One was a mayor who got fed up, and took a judgeship. Another was a state legislator who rose high in the State House, but mostly got phone calls about bees in people's yards and why everything sucked and nothing was free enough. (Both Democrats.) The third died in office. /2
Both of them were good men and honest as the day is long, and all they did was field, in real life, the sort of crap you see right here on Twitter. They didn't need the long hours and shitty pay, so they both moved on to big bucks - and left the town they represented. /3
The senator I worked for was also scrupulously honest - but he was a billionaire and didn't need anyone's money. And our mail was regularly hit with accusations of luxury junketing, as though being in Saudi Arabia was more fun than his actual ski lodge in Idaho. /4
People get the government they deserve. When I wrote "The Death of Expertise," I didn't know Trump was coming, but I knew someone like him was coming, and I knew it all the way back in the 1980s. /5x
