Quick 'Uns

Althouse: Was there some earlier Golden Age, when politics did not involve so much triviality and artifice?

Megan McArdle: I think most politicians, like most people, are basically well meaning folks who act out of some combination of idealism, a fervent desire to be liked, greed, power hunger, and trenchant ability for self-deception. I do not think that these qualities are notably unequally distributed between the parties, which is why I don't identify with either of them. Moreover, I think that the electoral calculus of a bipartisan system means that those qualities will always be roughly evenly distributed between the parties.*

*This is somewhat related to this post I wrote about leadership sometime back. There is one broader point I am thinking about, but at present somewhat stuck.