Reason Magazine: Sharif Matar Interviews Director Christopher Kay- What's Wrong with American Politics?

Source: Reason Magazine-

Source:Reason Magazine

There's an old saying about the American political system that goes something like this:  It is the worst political system in the world except for all the rest. Not exactly a high bar to shoot for, kind of like a football team that only wins one game all season and says, "Well at least we didn't go winless." And even if that saying about our political system is true, it's simply not good enough when you think about the power that is centralized in Washington with all that money coming into the city, buying influence, with most Americans not knowing how the money is spent and where it came from.

Not trying to make a libertarian anti-big government argument here, but they have a point that when so much power is centralized in one city and one government and when the two political parties are not even in favor of full campaign disclosure for all political incumbents, candidates and third-party campaigns, it is easy to see why you have such a corrupt political system, because regardless of what Washington politicians do for the most part, good or bad in a lot of cases, very few people know what they are doing, who they are talking to, where they get their money, and what their donors expect in return.

No wonder we have a United States Congress with an approval rating somewhere around 10 percent, with the people who do approve either no longer living or in mental institutions and who can't tell the difference between a good Congress and a bad Congress. Because this is why the word politician is equated with conman or scammer, "Oh, he is an elected public official, he must be up to no good," instead of applied to elected public officials as public servants. Because who are you really serving when your reelection depends so much on a few donors?