What I Thought I Knew About Politics

 

When I first got into politics, I thought it was filled with people who knew what they were doing. I thought power came with wisdom, that experience equaled expertise, and that the people sitting at the big tables must have earned their seats through vision and competence.

What I’ve learned since is that most of those tables are built on inertia, not insight. The truth is, very few people in power actually know how to use it well and many have stopped even trying.

When I worked on national campaigns and inside government, I assumed the systems I was serving were functional. Flawed, yes, but guided by people who cared about outcomes. What I’ve realized is that most of politics today is about management, not movement. The default mode is maintenance. And maintenance is killing us.

I used to idolize leaders. Now I see them as people. Human, complicated, often scared, sometimes selfish, but capable of extraordinary good when they remember who they work for. We have a culture of idolatry that turns politicians into brands and citizens into spectators. We mistake charisma for clarity and we excuse mediocrity because it’s familiar.

Politics shouldn’t be a hierarchy of heroes. It should be a system of service. But somewhere along the way, we started confusing visibility with value and forgot that every elected official is just a public employee, accountable to the people who put them there.

I thought the people in charge were doing the work. Now I know that most of them are avoiding it.

That’s not a condemnation; it’s a challenge. Because if the people who hold the titles aren’t building, then we have to. That’s what my campaign has become. Not an act of rebellion, but of repair.

We can’t fix what we refuse to face. And we can’t rebuild if we’re still worshiping the rubble.