Ideally, our elected politicians solve the problems WE, THE PEOPLE assign them.

Ideally, politicians are OUR employees, working for OUR communities’ greater good.

Invariably, politicians forget that when they get a little power, and will do whatever serves their futures, not ours. There’s no wound they won’t reopen, no minor issue they won’t distort, and no real problem they won’t ignore to ensure their personal success. 

We need the return of true statesmen, and the departure of politicians. As James Freeman Clark once wrote: “The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation.”

Get Book 4: The Falcon in the Barn, here. (And the rest of the series here.)

“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all [people], as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” Doctrine and Covenants 121: 39