There’s no doubt that the hottest political ticket in town right now is the US presidential race. With its style, glamour, drama and sheer bitchiness it’s a sort of cross between The West Wing and Desperate Housewives, except it’s for real and there’s a lot less sex.
For obvious reasons this particular presidential race is more exciting than most. We’ve got the prospect of the first woman president, the first black president, and (rather less excitingly I admit) the first Mormon president. As Chris Rock said on Jonathan Ross recently, perhaps the only real achievement George Bush is that he was so bad no southern white guy even dares seriously run this time. Alongside the Barack and Hillary show there are some other names of real substance in the ring – not least John McCain, a conservative, but undoubtedly a politician of genuine courage and belief.
It’s hard not to feel a bit envious. The collective CVs of the people standing are nothing short of magnificent, both inside and outside of politics. Most have already run states or big cities as successful governors or mayors, several have legislative and foreign policy experience from their time in the Senate, and nearly all have spent substantial spells working in the real world before running for office. Mitt Romney can boast he ran some of America’s most successful companies, whilst John Edwards’ story of becoming a successful trial lawyer from humble origins was a compelling part of his narrative.
Of course it’s hard to compare, but in British politics any sort of life outside Westminster is increasingly the exception rather than the norm. A stunning amount of our politicians know of little else, robbing them of empathy with the public and the ability to meet their aspirations when in office. The apotheosis of this is the current shadow cabinet, most of whom appear to have little more under their belts than spells at Eton, Oxbridge, and Conservative Central Office.
Does it matter? I think it has to.
There are serious concerns about the proficiency of some parts of our central government. I’m not just talking about the failure to keep track of registered sex offenders working in schools, the woeful Child Support Agency, or, well, the Home Office. Even policies like the brilliant tax credit scheme, has suffered because central government had an unrealistic idea of how it would operate in practice. Good ideas mean nothing without the means to implement them on the ground.
As a local councillor these central government dramas often bemuse me. The legacy of the past few decades has left a huge network of inspection regimes and regulations that every local authority must comply with. So expansive is this bureaucratic empire that it costs an astonishing amount of money each year to run. As someone who knows his local government history I can understand how we got here, but being lectured by central government on administrative competence sometimes feels a little ironic.
But one of the great things about local government is precisely that it gives people an understanding of how the machinery of state operates on the ground, while letting them keep their day jobs. If we want better politicians at the national level, this is where we need to breed them.
There’s much that could be done to achieve this, and not just by reinvigorating local government through extra powers and revenue. We need to create whole new avenues where people can take control of the decisions that are made in their communities. Strong personalities should be seen as an advantage, rather than a problem, when selecting our parliamentary candidates. Put simply, if we want one day to be choosing between the sort of candidate being offered in the US right now, we need the apparatus to make it happen.
Jonny Reynolds