Why JFK's famous request to 'ask what you can do for your country' is still relevant today
If we are to get good politicians, voters need to stop being so cynical and distrusting of people in public office
Who would be a politician? In the aftermath of another general election, some this weekend will be victorious but most will feel simply battered and bruised. That is the nature of politics nowadays.
With all the challenges of the modern world, we need the best politicians we can get but we seem to think we have the worst. The latest Ipsos Veracity Index measured trust in politicians at 9 per cent. That’s the lowest ranking ever measured and well below estate agents, advertising executives and journalists. Even lawyers fare better. The lack of confidence seems to stem from numerous scandals that have encouraged the view that politicians no longer act out of a sense of national duty. But was it ever different?
A century ago, the Marconi Scandal revealed insider trading by Liberal politicians prior to the awarding of a lucrative government contract. Then came the Honours Scandal when it was claimed Lloyd George sold peerages for cash, the Profumo Affair, mixing sex and espionage, and the Poulson corruption case which brought down Home Secretary Reginald Maudling. All are now footnotes in history but they show politicians have always been as vulnerable to temptation as the rest of us.
In politics for the right reasons
What’s changed seems to be our understanding of that. Respect for politicians has haemorrhaged and with it any empathy for the people doing the job. Social media makes it easy to depersonalise politics and howl abuse. Sometimes that spills over into real life. Two MPs have been murdered in the past decade and the UK Government now spends £31m on keeping MPs safe.
In my job, I get to see a lot of politicians up close. With very few exceptions, they are in it for one reason, to make life better. They may see different routes to achieving that goal but the aim remains the same.
As in every other walk of life, there are wrong ’uns – people who enter politics specifically to seek personal or financial gain but they are few and far between, and not very bright because there are other professions far better suited to that end result. The crooked and dishonest will get their comeuppance and with it comes deserved public castigation which lives on long after their parliamentary careers are over and the rest of us have moved on.
‘A wonderful place’
But we need to give the rest a break. We get the politicians we deserve and if we are not prepared to enter the fray ourselves, the relentless cynicism towards those who do step forward corrodes us as much as them.
When Commons Speaker John Bercow stepped down, he left with these final words: “Parliament is a wonderful place, filled overwhelmingly by people who are motivated by their notion of the national interest. We degrade this parliament at our peril.”
Our political system is not perfect and our politicians are only human, but the great democratic process has done its job again. At a time when governing systems are in peril in many places, we need to recalibrate about our approach to those who represent us if we expect good people to want to do the job. And we need to remember the words of JFK, “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”.
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