DARWINIAN DC AND THE CHAMELEONS OF DEMOCRACY

This is a slight elaboration of a comment I posted on Phil Giraldi's piece on Rand Paul and his his unsoundness regarding Israel.

While at a gathering of foreign policy types in DC the other night I noticed an assemblage of Secretary of State portraits.  They were arranged so that the most recent were foremost.  It struck me as a sort of darwinian regression, in which superior creatures beget lesser creatures until they resemble inferior copies of the original.  Comparison of recent Secretaries with the 19th and early 20th century oil portraits on the wall was an invitation to despair.  

My point is that our political culture and the class of people who make up that class, are incapable of producing the sort of people we want.  If the climb to the summit of power in the US eliminates any class of people, it is precisely the people we need most.  As the saying goes, to go high you must travel light.  Weighty objects like consistency, truthfulness, loyalty and principle have no place in the backpacks of such climbers.  Only lightweights get to the top.

Why on earth are we shocked that only mountebanks succeed in our mass culture?  Democracy is a jungle in which Chameleons are the best adapted to breed and succeed.