Do legislators feel entitled to keep their seats indefinitely?
To expand a bit on my comment to Josh’s recent entry:
Josh considered some strategic reasons why Senator Casey is encouraging fellow Pennsylvania Democrats to step aside and not challenge newly-Democratic Senator Spector if he seeks reelection in 2010. The strategic arguments are interesting and make sense to me, but I wonder if something simpler is going on as well. A lot of these politicians are friends or, at least, have many friends in common. And, even if they don’t know each other very well personally, they identify with each other. Senator X doesn’t enjoy a primary challenge, and so he feels empathy for Senator Y: why should he have to go through a primary challenge either? I suspect that if these guys could have their way, they’d all have lifetime appointments.
I don’t know anything at all about the personalities involved here, and I’m sure I’m missing a lot on that account. But I do feel (with no particular evidence) that attitudes are often determined by being able to put yourself in other people’s shoes, and I can well believe that sitting politicians see election challenges as more of an annoyance than a legitimate part of politics. It’s sort of like the way in which I’d like to just get grant money without having to do the tedious work of writing a proposal.
So, my real point here has little to do with whether Casey and Spector personally like each other and more to do with a general feeling of entitlement to an existing political office.
Comments
But that wouldn’t explain why DeMint told Specter he was going to support Toomey against him in the GOP primary.
Posted by: Doug Hess | May 4, 2009 02:38 PM
Doug: Certainly there are ideological and partisan concerns as well. I wasn’t trying to deny that, just to point out an additional factor that often seems to be overlooked.
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May 4, 2009 06:40 PM
I think you are right that they sympathize with each other. I know a Latin Americanist (right word?) who pointed out that the leaders of the some socialist and conservative parties in Latin America/Central America sent their kids to the same schools and knew each other well. He wondered if that mattered when it came time for coups and killings.
Posted by: Doug Hess | May 4, 2009 08:43 PM
I suspect that if these guys could have their way, they’d all have lifetime appointments
I really don’t think that distinguishes them from workers in any other profession or industry.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward | May 4, 2009 11:26 PM
Anonymous: I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to want lifetime employment. After all, I have lifetime employment and I like it! I’m just suggesting that this sort of reasoning might explain some of the behavior that politicians sometimes show toward each other. In political science we tend to look for instrumental or strategic explanations but maybe that’s not the whole story.
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May 5, 2009 06:27 AM