Wanted: full-time fundraiser and cable TV debater with secondary responsibilities in policy development. Must be willing to work seven days a week and spend vacations listening to people's problems and asking for money. Be prepared to disclose your personal finances and give up your privacy and much of your family life. If you are selected for this position, you will receive a one-night bonus of a party (with balloons), but you must be prepared the following day to start raising money to convince us you should be kept on after two years. High-level management post also available to resilient individual willing to travel constantly to raise money for colleagues.
Really, is it any wonder public service has become such an unappealing career choice?
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Being a member of Congress used to have some sort of cache, not to mention perks. You got called "The Honorable," attended nice, open-bar parties, and had the satisfaction of knowing you were making laws to improve the country's condition or even save lives. Now, serving in Congress means making fundraising a central activity, turning down invitations and even gifts from friends if they run afoul of ethics rules, and spending your days fighting with colleagues – all with no legislative reward.
Congress is historically unpopular, and it's gotten more personal. The standard joke in Washington used to be that people hated Congress, but loved their congressman. Now, notes Kyle Kondik, a political analyst with the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, voters aren't feeling too warmly about the people they themselves sent to Washington. An ABC poll last year showed that for the first time in a quarter century of polling, a majority of Americans disapprove of the job their own representatives are doing, and a Rasmussen poll last month showed that just a third of voters wanted to re-elect their congressmen.
On Capitol Hill, House Republicans are finding themselves in a stunning crisis, begging (so far, without success) Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to take the job as speaker, since hardly anyone wants to be second in line to the presidency, and the ones who have expressed interest appeal only to small factions of the party. Both parties are having some difficulties recruiting 2016 candidates for the U.S. Senate. North Carolina and Colorado should both be competitive states, especially in a presidential election year, and the control of the U.S. Senate could be in doubt, Kondik notes. But Democrats are scrambling to find a strong contender to challenge GOP Sen. Richard Burr in the Tarheel State, while Republicans have failed to recruit a formidable challenger to Democratic Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.
And young people? They want to make a difference in the world, experts say. They just can't imagine doing it in elected office.
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Law and government students at Rutgers University "should be great candidates" for government and elected office, says Rutgers University political science professor Shauna Shames, who surveyed 800 students on the topic. "It's heart-warming to see how much they want to make a difference [but] they don't feel like politics is an arena where that can happen. And it breaks my heart as a political scientist."
Harvard University's Institute of Politics, which has an ongoing poll of millennials, found that people aged 18-29 have little faith in Congress and the federal government and would prefer to spend their volunteer efforts on non-governmental missions. Just a third of those in a 2014 poll said they would volunteer for a political campaign if a peer asked, and if they had the time, compared to more than two-thirds who said they would make the commitment to community service. Only 18 percent said political engagement was the best way to "solve important issues facing the country," while 42 percent said they preferred community volunteerism.
The trend is disturbing, says former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, executive director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program, since it foreshadows a Congress and federal government even less functional than it is now, when lawmakers can't even agree on a basic highway or omnibus appropriations bill.
"What a lot of people see is that there's not much being accomplished. They get the sense that government is stratified, rigid," says Glickman, who is also a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "For enterprising young people who want to make a difference, that's not very appealing. That's really harmful, long term, for the political system. You can't have a strong country if you have a disengaged population. That's an opening for demagoguery of the worst sort."
Millennials and young professionals are disgusted with the way Washington officials are behaving and want no part of it, says Jennifer Lawless, an American University professor and co-author, with Richard L. Fox, of Running From Office: Why Young Americans are Turned Off From Politics. So who will take the jobs? "Stunted student body presidents," Lawless responds. "The people who are willing to consider running are the people who feel the most comfortable in this kind of dysfunction, which makes it unlikely that they will value compromise and efficiency in their own right.
"Someone will always be willing to run," Lawless adds. "The question is, are they the best and the brightest and the most competent?"
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Young people are turned off by the pressure to fundraise and the demands political jobs put on their family lives, Shames says, a complaint that has become increasingly common among elected officials. Decades ago, lawmakers (generally men) moved their families to Washington and developed social lives here (former Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott speaks wistfully about living on a street with several colleagues from both parties living nearby and their children playing together). When Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich became House Speaker, he urged his caucus members not to move their spouses and children to D.C., a city the GOP was casting as a symbol of waste and liberalism. With more females in the chamber – and more female spouses with their own careers to tend to – the family often stays back in the district, adding to the personal stress of congressmen. Ryan, in fact, cited his desire to spend time with his children as a concern about taking the speaker's job and its frequent flyer requirement.
Lawless recommends not just civics education in high school, but a valuation of civics by college admissions officers. Higher educational institutions routinely give credit to applicants who do volunteer work – a factor Lawless said led to an increase in teenage volunteerism – and could do the same for students who get involved in political or public affairs work, she suggests.
Massachusetts State Sen. Eric Lesser, 30, says he might have been another millennial statistic, had he not had a formative experience in high school before going on to college and then Harvard Law School, the Obama campaign and the Obama White House before returning to Massachusetts to run for the state senate. Young people who worked on the campaign are used to instant results, he says – such as the case of Lesser's fraternity brother, Mark Zuckerberg, making a fortune and changing lives with the creation of Facebook. "That's not how government works. That's not how politics works," Lesser says. But his millennial colleagues found that fact frustrating.
As a teenager in the small town of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Lesser had worked to roll back budget cuts, saving the jobs of some 40 teachers. "Despite the messiness and the conflict and frustration invoked in the political process, at the end of the day, it is actually a way to help people," Lesser says. "If I didn't have that exposure, or if I didn't see it with my own eyes, it would have been easy to lose faith." Instead, Lesser developed the peculiar patience needed to make changes through politics, running for – and winning – a state legislative seat representing his home region. And those teachers whose jobs Lesser fought to keep? Some of them volunteered for his campaign.
