Posted by I hope the cyber-thought police understand that the title is actually a very famous quote from William Shakespeare’s Henry VI. In today’s litigious world, one has to be extra careful that something one posts on the internet isn’t misinterpreted as a “threat against a visible group.” Especially if it is statement about lawyers. Lawyers stand out as probably the most vilified of professions as judged by the number of jokes that are made about them. “What do you call a room full of lawyers buried up to their necks in sand? Not enough sand.” Lawyers are also increasingly the least respected of all professions with a 2013 Pew survey showing a full 1/3 of Americans think lawyers “contribute not very much or nothing to society.” That is much lower than even the often maligned Hollywood stereotype of the “evil capitalist businessman” and lest journalists get too big-headed about their “sacred duty to act as a fourth estate” as the “defenders of the truth”, they rank right down there with the lawyers and capitalists. At the top of the list of most respected professions are the military, teachers, medical doctors, scientists and engineers.
Unfortunately, there is an interesting quirk in Western democracies. The people we elect to political office tend to be disproportionately lawyers. This is not a new phenomenon either. The great French political commentator Alexis de Tocqueville noticed this as far back as 1831 when he wrote his seminal piece Democracy In America.
In visiting the Americans and in studying their laws we perceive that the authority they have entrusted to members of the legal profession, and the influence which these individuals exercise in the Government, is the most powerful existing security against the excesses of democracy… In America there are no nobles or men of letters and the people is apt to mistrust the wealthy; lawyers consequently form the highest political class.
America is not unique in its selection of a large number of legislators from the legal profession, but it is abnormally high even by the standards of other Western democracies. A Yale study shows that “In total, more than half of all presidents, vice presidents and members of Congress in U.S. history had a background in law.” If Hillary Clinton had won, it would have meant that the White House was controlled by two families (Bush and Clinton) for the last 30 years (except for the Obama administration). That’s not exactly a glowing commendation of the state of pluralistic democracy in America. Plus Hillary, her husband Bill, as well as Obama were all lawyers by profession. Many comments (good and bad) have been made about Donald Trump not being from the political establishment. His catch-phrase “drain the swamp” may be just a modern incarnation of the slogan “kill the lawyers” as the American population is tired of seeing the political establishment put the same people on the ticket over and over again. But the fact that he is a businessman is hardly unique as that is the second most common profession for politicians around the world – just behind lawyers.
On the surface, having politicians who are lawyers sort of makes sense. As The Economist points out “The law deals with the same sort of questions as politics: what makes a just society; the balance between liberty and security, and so on. Lawyerly skills—marshalling evidence, appealing to juries, command of procedure—transfer well to the political stage. So, sadly, does an obsession with process and a tendency to see things in partisan terms—us or them, guilty or not guilty—albeit in a spirit of loyalty to a system to which all defer.” I personally think The Economist missed the most important skill that lawyers and politicians have in common. The gift of oration and the ability to twist facts and outright lie with a straight face.
But a recent paper from Stanford University titled “There are too many lawyers in politics” paints a darker picture of this phenomenon. Here, it equates lawyers with the elite as they are disproportionately wealthy themselves and have many contacts with the rich and powerful. This is a pretty useful background to have in a game where money is often the ticket to being elected. The majority of politicians in Congress are now millionaires; and yet liberals wonder why the “deplorables” in middle America think that politicians are out of touch with the average man. The same paper also finds a correlation between inequality in society and the percentage of lawyers that are elected to the legislature.
On the other hand, Nick Robinson, a lecturer in law at Yale, argues that the trend of lawyer politicians in America peaked long ago and has been in decline since the Second World War. Unfortunately, the decline has been offset by a substantial rise in another category – the career politician. I think democracy, as it was originally envisioned by the founder fathers of America, was supposed to be a public service by civic-minded citizens. Accomplished individuals from different walks of life would put their careers and businesses on hold for a while and perform their civic duty for the betterment of society as a whole. The rise of the career politician is, to me, a disturbing trend as I believe in the old adage that “those who want power probably shouldn’t have it.” The Economist is far more sanguine:
The emergence of politics as a career choice has been made possible, argues Peter Oborne in his book “The Triumph of the Political Class”, by a penumbra of quasi-political institutions—think-tanks, consultancies, lobbying firms, politicians’ back offices. They have increased job opportunities for would-be politicians. Increasingly, therefore, the road to a political career leads through politics itself, starting as an intern, moving to become researcher in a parliamentary or congressional office, with a spell in a friendly think-tank or lobby group along the way.
Mr Oborne says this is producing an inbred class that lacks proper connections to the outside world. Perhaps. But the trend is unlikely to stop. The intrusive demands upon aspiring members of any American administration make it harder for outsiders to enter politics. (The Obama team asked applicants, “If you have ever sent an…e-mail, text message or instant message that could…be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family or the President-Elect if it were made public, please describe.”) For good or ill, politics is becoming its own profession.
But politicians in different countries tend to have a wide-range of backgrounds and much of this depends on the country itself. It seems that the fast-track to the top of the political pyramid does vary considerably and probably has much to do with unique factors and the culture within each country. Not surprisingly, many dictatorships tend to be ruled by people with a military background. The French, being such fans of dirigiste socialist state control and planning not surprisingly picks their politicians from the civil service. “The graduates (only about 100 a year) of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, or ENA, based in Strasbourg. ENA has a quasi-monopoly over many top civil-service jobs, which, in France, serve as stepping-stones to politics. Seven of the last 11 prime ministers and two of the last four presidents have been énarques.”
One country stands out as a complete polar-opposite of America… China. As The Economist points out:
President Hu, in contrast, is a hydraulic engineer (he worked for a state hydropower company). His predecessor, Jiang Zemin, was an electrical engineer, who trained in Moscow at the Stalin Automobile Works. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, specialised in geological engineering. The senior body of China’s Communist Party is the Politburo’s standing committee. Making up its nine members are eight engineers, and one lawyer. This is not a relic of the past: 2007 saw the appointments of one petroleum and two chemical engineers. The last American president to train as an engineer was Herbert Hoover.
But that article is over six years old and China’s leadership has changed since then. Or has it? Here is an update from Silicon Africa:
The Chinese President, Xi Jinping, studied Chemical engineering at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University. Yu Zhengsheng, the chairman of the Communist Party graduated from Harbin’s Military Engineering Institute specializing in the design of Automated Missiles. The Premier, Li Keqiang has a PhD in Economics , and the Foreign Affairs Minister, Wang Yi, is a military and civil construction Engineer.
In other words, China’s top ranks are literally filled with technocrats and engineers. People whose mindset and instincts are to build things rather than talk and debate about doing things. As the Silicon Africa article points out, “The focus is ‘Techno-nationalism’ which puts science and technology as vital for achieving economic and political goals as well as national prestige. Lacking indigenous technological intellectual property and innovation are seen as key national problems… Today in China the most impressive buildings in poor provinces are schools. In the West, it is more likely to be a shopping center, and in Africa it would be the residence of the local governor.”
But America and the West haven’t figured this out this yet. One of the reasons why I actually preferred Trump to the other Republicans candidates was this comment by former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina who was also running for the Republican nomination. “I’ve been doing business in China for decades, and I will tell you that yeah, the Chinese can take a test, but what they can’t do is innovate. They’re not terribly imaginative. They’re not entrepreneurial. They don’t innovate. That’s why they’re stealing our intellectual property.” Being Chinese, I found her statement particularly insulting. You can check out her CV yourself but I found little in the department of imagination, entrepreneurship or innovation in her work history. I did find the CV of a corporate ladder climber who concentrated more on sales and marketing than research and development. I also found a 2011 New York Times article describing her forced merger between HP and Compaq as “one of the more questionable deals of the time.” and a 2015 article that went more into depth about her sordid reign of terror at HP. But those were actually being generous as Portfolio ranked her as 19th on the Worst American CEO’s in history in 2009 and described her as, “A consummate self-promoter, Fiorina was busy pontificating on the lecture circuit and posing for magazine covers while her company floundered. She paid herself handsome bonuses and perks while laying off thousands of employees to cut costs. The merger Fiorina orchestrated with Compaq in 2002 was widely seen as a failure. She was ousted in 2005.”
You decide which you would rather have running your country: A bunch of smooth-talking lawyers, career politicians, and salesmen – or – a bunch of oratorical ineloquent engineers and scientists who dress poorly. I know which way I’m leaning.
A lawyer and an engineer were fishing in the Caribbean and got to talking.
The lawyer said, “I’m here because my house burned down and everything got destroyed by the fire. The insurance company paid for everything.”
“That’s quite a coincidence,” remarked the engineer. “I’m here because my house and all my belongings were destroyed by a flood. My insurance company, too, paid for everything.”
There was a brief pause, and then the puzzled lawyer asked, “How do you start a flood?”