STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More

Share and Enjoy [?]

Here’s a question to ask your political candidate of choice: How much have you added to this nation’s gross domestic product?

I’m not talking merely about candidates for president. This is a question that should be asked of any candidate, at any level of national, state or local office.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the measure of all the goods and services produced in the U.S. economy. Compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the GDP figure includes data from commercial companies, government agencies and private individuals. It is a tabulation of all the economic activity in the nation.

I believe it is important to know how much a political candidate has contributed to our nation’s economy. Too many politicians have made a lifetime career of politics, going straight from law school into political office, never adding a penny’s worth of value to the total of goods and services that the American people produce from the sweat of their labor.

How many candidates have ever worked for a living? Worked, in the sense that they have added value to our GDP. Oh, I suppose a lawyer’s billable hours are toted up in the statistics that make up the GDP. But somehow that doesn’t seem as impressive to me as running a bulldozer at a construction site or creating a new business that hires working men and women. Even bagging groceries at the local supermarket is clearly a job that adds value to our lives.

Too many of our political office-holders have never really worked for a living. Never had to worry about how to pay their bills. Never learned to understand the relationship between hard work and income.

As a result, we get politicians who don’t seem to realize that tax money doesn’t appear magically: it comes out of the labor of the taxpayers. In a very real sense, tax dollars are not the government’s money. They belong to the people, not to the politicians who spend most of their careers figuring out ways to give away those dollars.

When those politicians talk blithely about raising taxes, it’s our money they’re spending and we ought to make certain that we get true value for the dollars spent.

So I ask political candidates, how much have you contributed to this nation’s gross domestic product?

Looking back at past presidents, for example, we see many who were born to great wealth, but also quite a few who had to work for a living before entering politics.

George Washington, for example, was not born wealthy. Actually, he married into wealth. Still, he contributed quite a bit to the GDP in his time. He worked as a surveyor, and then became a successful planter in Virginia, as well as a hard-working commander of the Continental Army — that ragtag collection of citizen-soldiers who suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the professional British army, yet finally won the War of Independence.

Abraham Lincoln worked as a rail-splitter, a grocery clerk and even a river-boat deckhand. Truth to tell, though, he always had a hand in local politics and went on to lead the nation through the Civil War.

One of our worst presidents, Ulysses S. Grant, was a failure at just about every job he tried. But he was a soldier who knew how to win battles. I don’t know if winning the Civil War would count in calculating GDP, but at least Grant tried to make something of himself. He only entered politics after he’d become a national hero, and he wasn’t very good at it, I’m afraid.

Theodore Roosevelt is a better example. Although born wealthy, Teddy supported himself by writing history and travel books before he got deeply enmeshed in politics, books that added their bit to the country’s GDP. Later, he raised a regiment to fight in Cuba in the Spanish-American War: the Rough Riders.

His nephew, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was much more patrician, although he did work on Wall Street in his younger years and served as an assistant secretary of the Navy during World War I.

Like Grant, feisty Harry Truman wasn’t very successful in business. He entered politics almost in desperation and became president only by the happenstance of FDR’s death. But apparently he never forgot what it was like to struggle to make a living. He understood the “little guy” because he himself had been one.

George H.W. Bush, our 41st president, joined the Navy at age 18 and flew 58 combat missions during World War II. Later he worked in the oil industry, then went into politics.

His son, our current president, also worked in the Texas “oil patch” and was a co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team before running successfully for governor of Texas.

It’s not all black and white, of course. I don’t mean for this GDP question to be a litmus test. Some of our best political leaders have been lifelong politicians. Some of our worst spent most of their lives earning money.

Herbert Hoover, for example, was a world-renowned engineer and a leader in helping Europe get back on its feet after World War I, a very capable and respected person. But as president he hadn’t a clue about how to deal with the Great Depression and got blamed — wrongly, perhaps — for its terrible toll.

On the other hand, John F. Kennedy was born to politics, guided and driven by his father into the White house. His life cut short by assassination, he is generally regarded with great admiration for the too-few “Camelot” years of his time in the White House.

Looking across the broad field of candidates running for political office today, how many of them have ever earned a living for themselves? How many of them have had any kind of a career outside of politics?

How many of them can you trust with your tax dollars?

LNaples voter Ben Bova is the author of more than 115 books. His latest futuristic novel is “The Aftermath.” Bova’s Web site address is www.benbova.com.