" The nation has been great, but the statesmen of the nation have been little. Men have hardly been ambitious to govern, but they have coveted the wages of governors. Corruption has crept into high places--into places that should have been high--till of all holes and corners in the land they have become the lowest. No public man has been trusted for ordinary honesty."
"Ministers of the cabinet, senators, representatives, State legislatures, officers of the army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade--all who are presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching public money, are thus accused. For years it has been so. The word politician has stunk in men's nostrils. When I first visited New York, some three years since, I was warned not to know a man, because he was a "politician." We in England define a man of a certain class as a blackleg. How has it come about that in American ears the word politician has come to bear a similar signification?"
Anthony Trollope's "North America, Vol 2", Chapter V. circa 1861
You don't have to read Trollope to find accusations (most of them true) of military supplier mismanagement: during the Civil War contractors sent weevil infested hardtack and spoiled meat as a common thing. It was more likely to happen than not. Cloth supplied for uniforms was a cheesy as possible...made to hold up until put upon the soldier's back.
Not a whole lot has changed.
Except I voted for Nixon back then and I won't vote for McCain.
It's worse than that. I was just reading an article in SA about the migration out of Africa - it started approximately 50,000 years ago. I suspect our ancestors even back then had a derogatory word for "politician" or the tribal equivalent.
And at least one tribal group that said the migration was a waste of time and resources :-).
One thing has changed. Today Obama wants to require employers (at least larger ones) to provide health insurance for their employees. Apparently that makes him a wild-eyed socialist. A few decades ago a sitting President proposed a similar law, his name was Nixon.
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