I was seated at Cafe Milano last Thursday, enjoying a perfectly serviceable branzino with a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, when his phone began to buzz. It was a staffer, frantically reporting that the Senator’s office switchboard was overwhelmed. The callers? Voters. Ordinary, uncredentialed residents of his home state, demanding that he take a specific position on an upcoming omnibus spending bill. The Senator sighed, pushed away his asparagus, and muttered something about the indignity of public life. I could only nod in sympathetic horror.
We are currently suffering through an epidemic of political entitlement in this country. Somewhere along the line, the American electorate got it into their heads that they are supposed to direct the actions of the people they elect. They want to dictate which offices their preferred politicians hold. They want to demand what positions they take on complex geopolitical conflicts they couldn’t possibly understand. They even want to know where and how these politicians live. It is fantasy football: political edition. And it needs to stop immediately.
The arrogance of the modern voter is truly something to behold. I recently attended a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival—moderated brilliantly, I must add, by a former chief of staff to a very important vice president—where the topic turned to constituent services. The consensus among the experts in the room was clear: the public has completely lost the plot. You do not draft a politician like a quarterback and then call the plays from your living room. You elect them to go to Washington, attend the right galas, build relationships with the right lobbyists, and occasionally deliver a somber floor speech about the middle class. That is the social contract.
Think about the sheer logistical nightmare of what the voters are demanding. They want their representatives to actually read the bills. They want them to vote in accordance with the platform they campaigned on. This is fundamentally unserious. A campaign platform is a marketing document, not a binding legal contract. When a CEO stands on a stage and tells you their new app will change the world, you don’t sue them when it just sells your medical data to a third-party ad network. You accept that this is how business is done. Why should the business of Washington be held to a more naive standard?
Let us consider the grueling theater of the campaign trail itself. It is already a monumental indignity that individuals of immense wealth and elite education are forced to don flannel shirts and pretend to enjoy eating fried butter on a stick at the Iowa State Fair. They do this to humor you. They do this to provide the electorate with the illusion of approachability. Is that not enough? Must they also, upon assuming office, actually implement the agricultural subsidies they promised while chewing on that butter? It is a gross violation of the unwritten rules of engagement. The campaign is the performance; the term in office is the reality. Blurring the two is simply bad manners.
The absolute worst thing you can do for a functioning republic is to introduce the variable of what the people actually want.
Arthur is exactly right. Let’s take the increasingly popular demand that politicians actually live in the districts they represent. This is perhaps the most juvenile of all voter complaints. A voter in a depressed rust-belt district expects their representative to maintain a primary residence next to a closed auto plant, rather than in a leafy Virginia suburb with excellent private schools. Why? Out of some misguided sense of solidarity? If your representative lived in your crumbling neighborhood, they would be depressed. A depressed representative cannot secure a meeting with the CEO of Northrop Grumman to discuss vital defense subsidies. They need the restorative air of McLean, Virginia, to govern effectively.
We must respect the division of labor. The voter’s job is to select between two pre-approved options every two to four years based on a vague sense of cultural grievance or brand loyalty. The politician’s job is to take that mandate, safely ignore it, and manage the administrative state in a way that does not upset the bond markets. When voters try to cross this sacred boundary by organizing, protesting, or calling offices, they are not participating in democracy. They are being incredibly rude.
Look at the sheer complexity of the issues. Take the tax code. Does the average voter, struggling to balance a household budget on a median income, truly understand the vital necessity of preserving the carried interest loophole for private equity managers? Of course not. They are too distracted by their own mundane concerns—paying for groceries, affording insulin, avoiding foreclosure. They lack the macroeconomic altitude required to see that taxing billionaires is bad for the spirit of the nation. This is why we have a professional political class. They are insulated from the petty distractions of everyday survival, allowing them to focus on the things that truly matter, like securing a seventh term and ensuring their children get admitted to Georgetown.
This dangerous trend of voter participation also threatens the delicate ecosystem of political appointments. When a new administration takes power, there is a time-honored tradition of rewarding bundlers, loyalists, and the failing children of prominent families with ambassadorships and deputy secretary roles. It is a beautiful, self-sustaining cycle. But now, the "fantasy football" voters are demanding competence. They are reading the resumes of cabinet nominees. They are asking why a man whose only qualification is owning a chain of regional car dealerships is being put in charge of the Department of Energy. It is none of their business. The car dealership owner raised five million dollars; he has earned the right to oversee our nuclear arsenal. To suggest otherwise is a direct attack on meritocracy.
The fantasy football mentality is particularly destructive when it comes to foreign policy. I was speaking with a former Secretary of State just last month—we were waiting for our cars at the Kennedy Center—and he expressed profound dismay at the public’s sudden interest in international aid and military funding. It used to be that the State Department and the Pentagon could quietly arm whoever they needed to arm, destabilize whichever region required destabilizing, and the public would simply wave a flag and thank the troops. Now, voters are reading international law. They are looking up UN resolutions on their phones. It is exhausting for everyone involved.
Governing is an art form. It requires compromise, nuance, and a willingness to look a wealthy donor in the eye and say, yes, I can attach that rider to the farm bill. You cannot do that if you are constantly looking over your shoulder to see if a coalition of nurses and teachers in your district is going to primary you. The constant threat of electoral accountability is a chilling wind that freezes the gears of pragmatic governance. We need our leaders to be free to make the hard choices, like cutting social security to offset corporate tax cuts, without the fear of being fired by the people they are ostensibly serving.
So, I ask the American people to take a step back and practice a little humility. Put down the protest signs. Stop memorizing the voting records of your local representatives. Cancel your subscriptions to those pesky independent newsletters that track campaign finance disclosures. Leave the governing to the professionals. You wouldn't walk into the cockpit of a 747 and tell the pilot how to fly the plane, would you? And you certainly wouldn't walk into the private dining room at the Capital Grille and tell a ranking committee member how to leverage their subcommittee chairship into a lucrative post-congressional lobbying career. Know your place. Go to the polls, cast your ballot, buy a bumper sticker, and then return to your lives. We will let you know when we need you again.