Word: self-interest
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...justify doing something that is in our own interest by suggesting it is good for all. Managers equate their own success with what is good for their employees. Politicians invariably believe their own reelection is nirvana for the electorate. So much of our politics is based solely on self-interest. Is it any wonder that people of high incomes tend to be Republicans and people of low income tend to be Democrats...
...then there is campaign finance reform. I don't claim that campaign finance reform is equivalent to Gandhi's quest for Indian independence (although you could argue that it was also in his self-interest), but it is a rare example of politicians who are motivated by something other than narrow and immediate self-interest...
...Ironically, what he has managed to do is to show other politicians that what they had traditionally thought was not in their self-interest actually is. He has made the case that money has so debased politics in America that every politician is personally debased as well. And, finally, that if they can do something that the voters might actually perceive as statesmanlike, those same voters will reward them at the ballot...
...free-for-all Senate debate that her husband had warned would be no "day at the beach" had turned out to be a rather gratifying display of old-time democracy - studded with orations, marked by backroom compromise and infused for the participants with the very real drama of self-interest. These politicians weren't just rewriting law, they were performing surgery on their own success, changing the system that got them where they are today. This was a bill that truly hit them where they live, and it showed...
...last year to millionaire challengers (and now freshman senators) Maria Cantwell and Mark Dayton. Susan Collins of Maine, a state where at least two rich Democrats are rumored to be considering a challenge next year, made sure politicians from small states got the biggest leg up. "There's raw self-interest, contrasted with the grand rhetoric," groused Jim Bopp, an adviser to the bill's chief opponent, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. "Almost everything they've done is to pad their own nest as candidates and protect themselves as incumbent politicians...