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Are our politicians worse than their predecessors?
They are neither better nor worse. Overall, they are intelligent and mainly focus on alliance-building.
The impression that they are worse stems from three factors:
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We tend to romanticize the past, portraying previous politicians as more serious and virtuous than they actually were. This is partly due to the fact that we observe the entirety of current policies, while we only observe the tiny minority of past policies that had a significant historical impact.
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Current problems are more complex, due to our greater technological expertise. Therefore, the gap between a solution hastily studied by an intelligent person and a solution worthy of the problem at hand is larger today.
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During the 19th century, technology transformed us into demigods. Before, some major issues such as famine resulted from meteorological hazards beyond our control, whereas now almost everything depends on our political choices. Our expectations are therefore legitimately higher.
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