It seems that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks President Obama doesn't make very much money. Of course, he is correct, considering the job Obama holds is the most important in the world. It hasn't been enough for a very long time, in fact, particularly when measured against the compensation of corporate heads, movies stars and under educated athletes.
Bloomberg is being slapped around for the remark as he seeks an unprecedented third term in the biggest of big city posts. There are those who see the multibillionaire as insensitive to the fact that a whole lot of Americans in these difficult times would see $400,000 a year and a $50,000 expense account bolstered by a $19,000 entertainment allowance as a pretty good pay package. Fair enough. But just try that amount on your average professional basketball, football or baseball player and see how far you get.
Actually, not only the president but most of those we count on to make democracy work at the highest levels are woefully underpaid -- members of Congress and the judiciary and the top-level staffers they employ. The result of this penurious approach to compensation is a steady stream of bad decisions, scandals and terribly weak performers. Those who take part in the process are, as they say at the crap table, "betting on the come" when they take their expertise and contacts into the private sector where they will bring a much higher price.
Federal lawmakers have decided on a 2.9-percent cost of living increase this year but nothing next year, being sensitive as they always are to the political implications of raising one's own salary in a downturn. That gives them the magnificent sum of something just over $174,000 annually, which, of course is expected to pay for two households, one here and the other in their home districts. While that amount seems tolerable for your average plumber, it doesn't add up too much for protecting our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
What that sum really means is that only wealthy or extremely poor people can afford to take the job, not an encouraging prospect for good government. But then when I came to this town, senators and House members were making $35,000 a year. Whoopie! So everything seems relative.
If one gauges one's importance by the amount of money one is paid, Obama, the fair to middling basketball player, would be sitting on the bench of a National Basketball Association team, wishing he were LeBron James, who makes so much money at 24 he can't count it all. Not only that, no one seems to complain about the amount James makes for possessing skills that could hardly be described as important to the nation's welfare. Nor does it seem to matter that his team can't win a championship or that he is a petulant jackass because of it.
While paying our elected and appointed officials what the job should be worth wouldn't solve all of those questionable activities history shows us are endemic to government, it certainly would help. The legendary Daniel Webster used to sell his vote because he wasn't paid enough to keep himself going and poor old Ulysses S. Grant was so destitute when he left the White House, he had to spend his last years in esophageal agony writing his memoirs, which everyone agrees are pretty darn good. That's not going to happen now, but why should the current occupant have to wait for big money?
So Bloomberg is absolutely accurate when he challenges the pay scale for the man who runs the largest corporation in the history of the world. The old idea that those who get the job should do it just for the honor is mostly bunk. Nearly everyone who runs for the job these days has a sizeable private bankroll. There is nothing wrong with that but how many Harry Trumans have we seen of late? Let's at least pay the people we elect an amount commensurate with the responsibility we heap on them. Then we can legitimately holler when they screw up.
(E-mail Dan K. Thomasson, former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service, at thomassondan(at)aol.com.)
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