On any given evening at any given locale in the United States, some variation of the following scene is unfolding:

Mr. Smith, a middle-aged man, is meeting his old friend Mr. Brown, also middle-aged, at a bar for a drink after work. They don’t see each other as often as they’d like to, so they are heartily enjoying their conversation. Slowly the topic begins to drift toward current events like a glass of milk being nudged unwittingly to the edge of a table. In an instant, it topples and crashes to the floor; Mr. Smith is vituperating the politicians in Washington for their greed, narcissism, degeneracy and general stupidity, and Mr. Brown is glowering and vehemently nodding his head.

There are two main classes of politicians. The first is the congenital megalomaniacs, about whom I have nothing to say here. The second is the sometime crusaders, the people who when they first ran for office had zeal and goals that have since disappeared.

It is the second class that is most interesting and most abundant. The political world is a vast and largely unkept garden, and every good citizen is offended by some weed enough that he would like to leap in and tear it straight out of the ground. The average person checks himself, however, because removing that weed would involve trudging through the dirt, and he does not want to muddy his shoes. Only the man who is enraged by the presence of that hateful plant, who cannot sleep without dreaming of its destruction, who has the boots to walk through the dirt, becomes a gardener. This man is the crusading politician.

Naturally, the people propel the man to Washington with all their might, because they too hate the weed that he hates and wish that it be uprooted and incinerated, and they fully confide that this will be done speedily. However, the weed never seems to disappear entirely. Perhaps the gardener never reaches it, or perhaps it is merely cut at the stem with the roots left intact, so it can grow again, but either way it still waves defiantly in the breeze, strangling the roses and the lilies and the geraniums.
What has happened to this gardener, this politician? He was not of that odious first class, which seeks power for itself. He seemed a people’s man committed to correcting their grievance, but it grieves them still. It often seems that Washington is disease-ridden and that no one, no matter how righteous, can work there long without becoming St. Damien of Molokai. It is said that power corrupts. The people’s current attitude is one of resignation: Politicians lie and cheat and steal, and there isn’t much anybody can do about it.

It is no surprise that all the famous quotations about politicians are disparaging; decrying public officials is like wrestling a quadriplegic. According to Gallup, the Congressional approval rating in 2014 was 15 percent among Republicans and among Democrats. That Democrats disapprove is not very interesting, seeing that they are currently the minority party in Congress. That Republicans disapprove so strongly is unsettling. Republican voters hate their own politicians.

I will wager any sum of money that 85 percent of current members of Congress will not lose in the next election. If your plumber is an idiot, you fire him; if your waiter is a bumbling fool, you leave him no tip; but if your congressman is a ninny, apparently it is customary to vote for him until he should decide to retire. In the private sector, the customer has the right to expect satisfactory work for his money, but in politics there is no penalty for failing to meet customers’ demands.

While there are many dolts, knaves and miscreants in Congress, the people are ultimately responsible for Congress’s inefficacy. They have rewarded it instead of punishing it. Politicians are not a separate species; the second class I delineated is composed of ordinary people who simply wanted to fix a problem. Whether Washington corrupted them is irrelevant. If politicians are as interested in reelection as everyone claims they are, then they will behave when their colleagues are thrown into the street by angry constituents. The American people must show politicians that noncompliance will result in loss of job. Then they will find that their representatives are much more attentive.