Fin du jeu : c’était donc une citation de F. McKinney Hubbard. Voici l’original : “We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he is never a candidate.” Vous avez tout un ensemble de citations du même ici.
Ce n’est pas là que je l’ai trouvé, mais, mise en exergue, dans un document de travail du NBER de Mattozzi et Merlo intitulé "Mediocracy" (NBER, 2007, WP n°12920, abonnement nécessaire). Le résumé :
In this paper, we study the initial recruitment of individuals in the political sector. We propose an equilibrium model of political recruitment by a party who faces competition for political talent from the lobbying sector. We show that a political party may deliberately choose to recruit only mediocre politicians, in spite of the fact that it could afford to recruit better individuals who would like to become politicians. We argue that this finding may contribute to explain the observation that in many countries the political class is mostly composed of mediocre people. (c’est moi qui souligne, c’est eux qui le disent…)
Les deux mêmes récidivent dans un autre Working Paper du NBER, intitulé cette fois "Political Careers or Career Politicians?" ((NBER, 2007, WP n°12921). Résumé :
Two main career paths are prevalent among politicians in modern democracies: there are career politicians (i.e., politicians who work in the political sector until retirement), and political careers (i.e., there are politicians who leave politics before retirement and work in the private sector). In this paper, we propose a dynamic equilibrium model of the careers of politicians in an environment with a private sector and a political sector, where individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their market ability and political skills. Our analysis provides an explanation for the existence of career politicians and individuals with political careers, and their motivations. We also investigate the effects of monetary incentives and other features of the political-economic environment on the quality of politicians and their careers. We show that an increase in the salary a politician receives while in office decreases the average quality of individuals who become politicians, decreases turnover in office, and may either decrease or increase the average quality of career politicians.
Bon, en clair, les politiciens seraient structurellement médiocres, et si vous décidiez de les payer plus chers, primo leur qualité baisserait et secundo ils ne décolleraient pas de leur siège.
Toute ressemblance avec des personnages ou des situations existants ou ayant existé etc, etc…