Self-Hating Politicians

Everyone hates politicians. What makes the American political scene interesting these days is politicians there hate themselves. Or at least they hate the government.

I don't understand the logic that would lead someone to vote for a person who does not think the government should exist. I really don't get it. I can understand it from the politicians' perspective. It would be like me getting a job I don't want to do and then convincing my employer to pay me to make sure it doesn't get done - not be me or anyone else. Then I could start a career as a highly paid consultant, telling others how to screw my old employer even worse than I had.

If you don't think there should be a government, why do you want to be part of it? Wouldn't the logical, and morally consistent, thing to do be not participating in the government? See, I don't get it.

Right-wing pundits like to say, "The government that governs least, governs best." As if that should be incentive for the government to stop doing things. The fact is governments in general, and the American government in particular, was never very good at actually doing things (except exporting weapons) so it was already doing a pretty good job - by the logic of the Right. Now that the Rights' attack dogs are keeping any and everything from actually reaching a vote with endless filibusters, the sequester cuts have taken effect and everyone in Washington is worker harder than they were before. They should have left it alone and let the institutional entropy take care of it.

This idea that governments are incapable of doing anything correctly is slightly but fundamentally different than the Friedmanite argument that government interferes with the actions of the market. Friedman's problem with the government was that it could do things but shouldn't. The new version is the government can't do things so it shouldn't try. It baffles me in detail and as a whole.

I really do not understand how a politician can spend his career alternating between "We can't do anything and shouldn't try" and "Vote for me!!!"