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Comment by EGreg | Hacker News Reader

I'm always curious as to why people think politicians are more motivated by reelection prospects that, say, their legacy or actually representing their personal views or convictions. I mean, I can understand why the ones that make it into office are the ones that fight hard to get elected in the first place, but once they are there, why wouldn't you expect a lot of them to take pride in actually representing their districts and really doing a good job in a representative democracy? I've always wondered why reelection is more important to these people supposedly then every other incentive! Can someone elaborate as to why this assumption is always made?

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Some do. But consider some simple mechanics of it:

It you care about your legacy, and your opponent only cares about getting (re-)elected to benefit from the position, your opponent is at an advantage: Your opponent does not need to "waste" time, money and effort on things that does not improve their chances at (re-)election.

If doing the job IS wasting time, that means the incentives are all wrong. But still, who says that re-election is the goal? What about the places where they are limited to only 2 terms? How could re election explain ther second term actions? Or are people going to claim that at that point they're all captured by te industry using the revolving door?

I think it's simply self-preservation. If they don't get reelected, they lose their job. Few people want that. Would you lose your job over your views on issues like gun control? May you would, but a lot (maybe majority) of people wouldn't. Look at the stories of people in former communist countries. Majority of them didn't want to even risk their jobs over much, much more serious issues than gun control, NSA, or abortion.

Bureaucrats don't want to lose ther jobs. But for elected politicians the job is to do what they said for a specified term. If doing their job properly means losing it, then maybe the incentives are all wrong. We already have term limits for presidents, what about senators and congresspeople?

Think of it this way: Suppose there exists a politician that cares deeply about N issues. She knows she can only do what's right on M out of those N due to various constraints. She is going to pick those M issues that are most important to her. She will fight tooth and nail to get reelected so that she can complete her work on those M issues. This is exactly what politicians should be doing, no?

Interesting point. I haven't thought about it that way. But do you think that's the explanation for all the activities where they flipflop on the other N-M issues?

Yes, partially, it is. If, as a politician, you deeply care about a specific issue that you think is most important, then you should be willing to do whatever it takes on all the other ones to get it done.

In that case, wouldn't it be nice to have a website that identifies every politician's main focus? Based on their votes and maybe with interviews on that page supporting it?

Such a website would be very useful to society, and can be done on city and state levels all around the world.

Also, being a congressman is VERY prestigious. Just having the job and all the perks that come with it(money, status, security, influence, etc) is very desirable.

I guess to me prestige is secondary to actually doing the job. After all with the congressman's connections he or she can continue to have an impact afterwards. Look at retired US presidents and vice presidents who want to continue to make a difference! Sometimes it's even easier and more pleasant for them once they're out of office.

People also say that regulators are captured by the industry via opportunities they get in a revolving door. They are offered cushy positions at the industry after they stop being politicians, in exchange for favorable votes. I could see this as possibly being a bigger motivator than re election.

Maybe there should be some consequences to not voting according to the policies you ran on. Buy in any case, if most politicians are awayed by lobbying, then being one politician who isn't won't make a huge difference.

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