The Brain Drain Afflicts Politics

Today, many view the move of talented and innovative people from established professions and businesses to dot-com companies as a key aspect of the “greed culture.” Gone, for many, are loyalties to even the best-paying stodge companies. Aggressive entrepreneurs seduced by start-ups have replaced old loyalists.

The concern here is less about individuals or companies than about the nation. Pose the greed culture against a notion of civil society, and service to self against public service. For years, many have been exercised about whether we citizens are uncivil in the sense of being rude or coarse. But we have become increasingly uncivil in the dictionary’s other meaning of “civil”: “relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state,” as in “civil society.” What happens when a society becomes uncivil and its best brains shun, even despise, politics and the political order?

Brain drain used to mean the migration of professionals from a less-favored nation to a more promising one. Now, the migration is from profession to profession, from one concept of society to another. Left behind is the glamour of the classic professions. Those leading to public service through politics are treated least civilly.

In colonial America, the ministry, though never high-paying, attracted the best brains. The clergy had a significant role in developing civil society. In revolutionary America, politics began to outbid the clergy among the brightest and best. In modern America, medicine, then law seemed to be where professionals could make money, find fulfillment and, ultimately, exercise a form of public service. Only a few years ago, investment banking and consultancies challenged all the above. People in these fields could do so without disdaining political life even if they did not feed into it directly.

Weep not for most of them. The greed culture has not entirely won. Millions of citizens continue to choose creative and productive positions that do not offer stock options.

Weep, however, for the talent drain away from the profession of politics. To much of the public, the very idea of being a professional politician smacks of corruption or flies in the face of what populism demands. The notion that only amateurs, or “losers” in other professions, are interested in mastering the complex role of politician is a sign of the low status given aspirants.

There are many reasons that leaders do not gravitate to politics. Elections have become more like auctions, forcing professionals away from the arts of public service and from political science. The public’s taste for sleaze journalism and the relentless attacks by each against all in political campaigns do not help attract capable people to legislative, executive or judicial roles, or speak well of many drawn to them.

Were there “good old days”? In the year of its birth, the United States numbered fewer than 4 million, fewer than Los Angeles now. Politicians came from only the male half of the 1.6 million whites in the population. Yet, among the drafters of the Constitution were talents like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and dozens more. Why could little America in 1787 find so many great politicians, and why, in 2000, do we have trouble finding one?

There were aggressive bankers, entrepreneurs and investors among the founding fathers in Philadelphia, along with inventors (remember Franklin). Still others demonstrated engineering capabilities that would mean success in the Silicon Valleys of today. But they put a premium on statecraft, recognized a vocation, a calling, for politics, wanted to excel in it and did. Historians know the limits and flaws of many of them. They know even more about the really bad times in politics between the founders’ time and ours.

But rather than romanticize the past or cut such figures down to size, we should ask what to do about the present. Trashing the greed culture is insufficient. It is not helpful to dwell on stories that evoke Schadenfreude, joy in others’ misfortunes, when dot-com geniuses turn fools, fail or become victims of the entrepreneurial wave that follows theirs.

Nor is it fruitful to stand on the sidelines and wait for the greed culture to disappear. There can be recessions, bear markets and bad years. But a generation could pass before the headhunting slows or some new profession emerges. Greed is portable: We don’t count on it disappearing from human nature, certainly not in the world of politics. When think tanks talk about a “pornography of success” in the marketplace and athletics, they don’t dare close their eyes to such an obsession in the politics of trash and thrash.

Trying to find some new balance among professions and reevaluating politics have to begin with an effort to gain perspective. For example, hostility toward politics and politicians leaves a vacuum that someone or something uncivil will fill. It breeds disillusionment. Polls and surveys find that successful entrepreneurs, and college students who want to emulate them, are wildly optimistic about their personal futures but pessimistic about anything good ever coming out of politics. Yet, the personal and public realms are vitally interconnected. A nation cannot long endure a climate in which individuals prosper, and the common good turns uncommonly bad. All enterprise depends upon a foundation in a civil society, which always needs tending.

Even today, there are numerous women and men who bring nobility to politics and serve the public well. They get little notice. Yet, we know that when talented young people are drawn to politics, it is often out of admiration for such models.

Both as an emergency action and for the longer haul, cultural leaders must help young people develop a fresh sense of vocation. Many do find such a sense of calling, using the few spare hours that competitive university life allows them to work for Habitat for Humanity and other volunteer organizations, to travel the world and interact with others. Some professional athletes set examples by their human service and charitable endeavors. Many students pursue curricula that help them find meaning in life and direction for their talents.

“Vocation”: The word is coming back on the campuses, at retreats and wherever people look ahead seriously. A good text for commencement addresses comes from Jose Ortega y Gasset: “Strictly, a person’s vocation must be a vocation for a perfectly concrete, individual and integral life, not for the social schema of a career.”

Much of higher education of the recent past has concentrated on nothing but careers; career fairs and career counseling are big, important businesses. But obsession with career tracks that lead to nothing but high pay will not satisfy the deeper longings of the heart or the best intentions of the mind--or rebuild civil society.

Whether people find their sense of calling coming from conscience, awareness of the brevity of life, demands and joys of family living or having found the right friends, this sense will guide the best of them through professional and career setbacks. It will help them keep their successes in perspective and move them toward more fulfilled lives--many, we hope, in politics. The reality of greed culture will finally meet its match in the realization of a more civil society. *