Clinging to Power

Aged politicians are power-hunger in its purest form

Businesspeople are driven by greed, and politicians by power-hunger. While those are rarely their sole motivations, they are, roughly speaking, their defining motivations. Almost all businesspeople deeply desire to make money, and almost all politicians deeply desire to wield power.

When I speak this way about businesspeople, critics rarely challenge me. But when I speak this way about politicians, I get ample pushback. “Power-hunger?! Politicians seek only the power required to defend their people.” You might think that critics would at least admit that the politicians they don’t like are driven by power-hunger. There too, however, critics are strangely eager to insist that even the politicians they despise are driven by the sincere desire to make the world a better place… from their own twisted point of view.

You could shrug, “It’s a classic problem of observational equivalence. A politician who sincerely yearns to do what’s best for humanity will act as if he’s maximizing power. Why? Because he needs maximum power to do maximum good.”

Sometimes, however, there is a blatant conflict between amassing power and doing good. Most obviously, when a politician grows old.

In his youth, a politician might sanely claim, “I’m the best person in the world to advance my wonderful agenda.” While such statements smack of megalomania, they’re not clearly crazy. Once a politician hits 75 years of age or so, however, “I’m the best person in the world to advance my wonderful agenda” is absurd. Your physical health is poor, your cognition is impaired, and you have a high chance of dying midstream. By that point, any leader whose fundamental goal is to do good will pass the torch to the next generation. Regardless of the “good” you have in mind, there’s got to be someone else on Earth who roughly agrees with your goals, yet doesn’t have one foot in the grave.

Consider the case of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This leftist icon stayed on the Supreme Court until her death in 2020 at the age of 87. When Democrats lost the Senate in 2014, she could have immediately announced her retirement so Obama could hastily appoint — and the lame duck Senate could hastily confirm — a much younger version of herself. If she prioritized the real-world success of her judicial philosophy, that’s precisely what she would have done. Instead, she put personal power first. While she couldn’t have known for sure that a conservative would soon occupy her seat, she willingly assumed that risk. Six extra years of power for herself, followed by years of decisions her fans hate.

The same naturally goes for Biden. If he wanted to maximize the Democrats’ chance of holding the presidency, he would have followed the path of Lyndon Johnson and announced his decision not to run months ago. Instead, he decided to cling to power. Sure, you could protest, “He’s too senile to follow this line of reasoning,” but he was not always as he is now. If he prioritized the real-world success of his political philosophy over personal power, he would have arranged a proper succession back when he still had the wits to do so.

My point is not that any particular elderly politician should have relinquished power. My point, rather, is that the rarity of relinquishment is strong additional evidence that politicians are indeed driven by power-hunger. Their main concern is not making the world a better place even from their own point of view. Instead, what politicians want to do is wield power, come what may. Which is a good (though hardly decisive) argument against giving them power in the first place.

P.S. I finished writing this on July 1. If Biden resigns before this posts, we should still say, “It’s a day late and a dollar short” — and blame power-hunger for the delay.

Palpatine, an old but spry politician.