Why are so many politicians so bad?

Wretchard at PJ Media was wondering how the voters of one ward in D.C. could repeatedly vote Marion Barry as their councilman. Because people like Barry or Al Sharpton--and many white pols as well--are so awful (i.e. hateful, corrupt), it defies probability that their selection to office could be by chance.

And when considering how bad congress as a whole is, the probability of coming up with that cast of characters that inhabit the reaches of politics purely at random is astronomically unlikely.

He concludes that there must be a "bias for badness" in politics: a bunch of guys chosen by lottery would be better than the choices thrown up by the party machine process.

Why is that? I think it is because the system actually operates to maximize a different objective function from that advertised. The politicians are not there to serve the people. They are there to serve themselves. And hence we see this extraordinary collection of defectives in office. The system may not be broken. It may be working.

Yes.