The job: Politician
You might like this job if: You enjoy public policy, speechifying, political science, social reform, governance, and watching CSPAN for a purpose other than helping to kill insomnia.
The good: Politicians have the ability to affect social change through new policies, laws, directives and so on. Instead of being one of the masses complaining about how hard it is to change things, you’ll be the one doing the change. Whether it’s at the city, county, state, regional, national or global level, you’ll be making decisions that will help make things better for others.
The bad: …or not. Putting aside the special interests, bribery, pork barrels, election rigging and everything else that made “politics” such a dirty word, the simple action of getting your ideas made to actions is a tremendous undertaking. Between committees, debates, changes to the proposal and other conflicts, it can take months or years to even get the chance to have one’s suggestions put up to a vote, much less approved. Additionally, there’s a lot of campaigning that has to be done all the time in order to secure donations to run for re-election. Put together these factors (and more, like stress), and it’s easy to see how politicians age so quickly.
Summary: It’s a big headache for those involved, full of corruption, stress and scandal, but if you’re truly passionate, you might like it.
Rating: Four American flag pins that darn well better be on your lapel out of five
