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The issue is the way we’ve set up the system. The absurd amounts of money required to win and the connections required to gain access to enough funding to win things like large city offices, statewide offices, and obviously Congress itself. The activist path you mentioned isn’t exactly “I helped in a soup kitchen.” Most that I’m aware of came to prominence in what I call the “professional protest” charities. Advocates for popular causes among the elite and they’re generally high up in those organizations. The professional paths that lead to candidacy are generally the kind that run through getting to know movers and shakers. Working a campaign, professional advocacy, being a lawyer or other elite professional, one does not simply run for office above dog catcher or local school board.
So of course this tends to weed out the altruist fairly quickly. An altruist wants to actually help people, so his charity work would be less about “professional protest organizations” than building or fixing things, feeding hungry people, educating kids, and so on. The kind of work that gets things done other than legislation. But that sort of charity is highly unlikely to get you into the social network that allows you to be a viable candidate for serious leadership roles. You also have to spend a lot of time being vetted by those elites for acceptance both ideologically and socially. You have to start early enough to have introductions to local [party of choice] leaders, and thus be fairly well off before you start. This is why most of our current political leaders are lawyers and mostly from elite schools.
All of this is basically like the old Roman system. Find Patrons, do high level high visibility things that powerful people like. Then once you’ve been accepted as one of them, you can help out on high visibility campaigns and eventually get to run for office yourself. None of which actually solve real world problems, and in fact are a pretty strong headwind against people who want to work on real world problems. If you want to fix infrastructure, get into construction and fix potholes. But it’s not glamorous enough to be the kind of thing that makes you a potential candidate for elected office.
Of course because of this, I think it would be highly unusual for someone to run and win because he wants to fix things in the way you and I would think about it. The system effectively weeds those people out quickly, especially if you’re talking about the federal government. They have to care about the opinions of their sponsors, the opinions of the people attending very expensive dinners, and the opinions of the tastemakers in the media. None of whom care about blue-collar Americans or potholes on main street.
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