I understand this sentiment.

PRINCETON, NJ — By a 2-to-1 margin, 64% to 31%, Americans would not like their child to go into politics as a career. The results are the same whether the question is asked about a “child,” a “son,” or a “daughter.” There has been little change in the percentage of Americans who would favor a political career for their son or daughter over the past two decades.

I just think that it’s a bad sentiment to have. Or at least a suboptimal one. Hearing that almost two-thirds of the country is made up of people who hate the idea that their kids could go into politics fill me with two worries: a, that our system is set up to discourage the kind of people that we’d like to run for office; and b, that our system is set up to encourage the kind of people that we don’t want to run for public office*. Neither possibility is a fun one.

I know that I’m writing this to be read by people who already realize how important politics and policy both are, but it occurs to me that we should be encouraging more people to come to a similar realization. If for no other reason than to increase the talent pool.

Moe Lane

*Note, by the way, that there’s no need for a conspiracy to have had this happened (indeed, a conspiracy we would have discovered by now, because most conspiracies don’t actually work). The whole thing could happen from just bad policy decisions and no reality checks.