Americans love to trash their politicians as corrupt and self-interested, but they don’t agree on a solution. How can America attract good leaders to the thousands of elective offices in the land? In Politicians: The Worst Kind of People to Run the Government, Except for All the Others, Bruce Chapman lays out a bold plan for the changes we need to make in our public life if we are serious about enable worthy leaders to emerge to and to succeed. Drawing on history as well as his own extensive experience in politics and public policy, Chapman challenges the conventional wisdom about politicians, arguing that their chief rivals – the media, bureaucrats, college professors, and even political “reform” groups – are often sources of further political demoralization rather than renewal.

Bruce K. Chapman worked on national and local campaigns throughout his life, started a magazine (Advance: A Journal of Political Thought), was an editorial writer for The New York Herald-Tribune, co-authored (with George Gilder)The Party That Lost its Head, and wrote The Wrong Man in Uniform, an early argument for an all-volunteer military. He served on the Seattle City Council in the 1970s, was elected Secretary of State of Washington twice, was chosen Director of the U.S. Census Bureau under President Reagan, and then served as a Deputy Assistant to the President in the White House. In the late 1980s he served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna. In 1991, he founded Discovery Institute, a public policy think tank that supports research on science, culture, economics, technology, transportation, national defense, and civic leadership.