Prolonged Power Ultimately Corrupts
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The resignation of Oregon’s governor is the latest example that de facto lifetime tenure for a politician is a bad idea
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Lord Acton observed that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” A corollary to such would be that prolonged power corrupts ultimately.
Such was proven yet again today when Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned, giving in to mounting pressure to abandon his office amid suspicions that his fiancée used her relationship with him to land contracts for her green-energy consulting business.
In a lengthy statement, the state’s longest-serving chief executive insisted he broke no laws. He said the resignation would be effective Wednesday.
The announcement is a stunning fall from grace for a politician who left the governor’s office in 2003 after 2 terms as governor and then mounted a comeback in 2010 and won back his old job as well as re-election in 2014 for a fourth gubernatorial term.
Governor Kitzhaber’s prolonged tenure built up an immunity to knowing right from wrong
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A Liberal in a Liberal state, no one would argue that he was not a dedicated and honest public servant in his first tranche of governorship. But ultimately he lost his way as perhaps he was in the office for so long that he became insulated from and immune to the ethical strictures of a public servant.
There’s a lesson here for voters.
History is replete with politicians who would not let go of office either because of ego or the honest belief that the government and society they served would collapse without their sage participation. Yet there has never been a politician where such has been true. And the longer they stay in office, the higher the chance that they will get into trouble, especially as they feel they are acting with impunity given multiple election victories and a sense of mandate for anything they do from the voters.
From George Washington stepping down after 2 Presidential terms at the birth of this republic to Ronald Reagan’s departure as the Cold War was winding down to Mario Cuomo’s defeat in his bid for a fourth term as governor of the Empire State, the republic, or the mini-republics as states are, always find a way to plod on and even do better with an infusion of new people with fresh ideas.
Whether Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal, no politician is indispensable, even if valuable.
Such dispensability rings true especially as government has been failing more often than ever before. As the manager of the losing baseball team said in defending the trade of their star player, “we lost with him, we can lose without him.”
-I.M. Windee
