A Politician in My Living Room

When we pass each other on the street, it is not only people who meet, but also desires, life stories, successes and failures. Of course, only briefly, because the details are known only to the few hundred people with whom we have real relationships.

Yet there are people who suddenly appear in our living room, like a hologram. We do not know them, yet what they say has an impact on our lives.

I was sitting in my living room when a Hungarian “politician”, speaking from the territory of another country, announced that the pricing of household gas would change. After a quick calculation, I came to just one conclusion: instead of two months’ income, I would henceforth have to spend six months’ income on heating.

I did not invite this “fellow citizen” into my living room, yet he forced his way in, showing little regard for the privacy that is part of my civic rights.

On another occasion, I could learn from the publication of a law that the state had regulated whom I could love and whom I could not, or whether the church I belonged to would officially be recognised.

Politics determines the possibilities of our lives every day: sometimes expanding them, sometimes narrowing them.

That is why I have always found it strange when politics is simply treated as a profession. Political work can certainly be a professional activity requiring serious knowledge, experience and particular skills. But I do not believe it necessarily has to become a lifelong occupation.

In other fields, we take it for granted that someone first acquires a profession, works, gains experience, experiences success and failure, and then puts that knowledge at the service of the community for a period of time. Why should public life be any different?

For me, it is therefore important that a politician should have a professional and personal history that does not originate in political power. There should be something they knew and did before they became a member of parliament, a state secretary or a minister.

I have no problem with someone learning the professional rules of politics. What concerns me is when politics becomes their only professional world, their only environment, and eventually they can see society only through the experience they have acquired within politics.

Political life cannot be placed within a system of rules in which citizens have no legitimate means of defending themselves. Anyone who seeks nothing but a salary or influence has no place close to political decision-making.

Hungarian political life is currently undergoing significant changes. Those changes are still taking place, and we cannot yet see the final outcome. I hope, however, that the eventual result will be more beneficial to society as a whole.

In some countries, there is a familiar career path in which politicians periodically bring the expertise and professional knowledge they have acquired in the private sector into the service of society.

Today we can get to know many such leaders, and we often know far more about them than we do about the person we accidentally bumped into on the bus.

And in such cases, we ourselves look for the opportunity to see them in our living rooms.

Why do we feel this sympathy?

Perhaps because they have earned it. A press conference can sometimes compete with the major streaming channels. We are happy to watch a minister whose professional enthusiasm did not suddenly appear when they were appointed, but who, judging from their life story, has been interested in the subject since adolescence.

We too are left breathless when a state secretary, their voice breaking with emotion, presents the results of an investigation concerning child protection. At such moments, we see not merely an office-holder, but a human being who is capable of expressing emotions and showing us that they are one of us.

Among the members of the current Hungarian government there are several professionals who acquired knowledge and experience in their own right in the private sector and later chose to use that knowledge in public life. Some also built careers, wealth and personal independence before entering politics.

Perhaps that is why they can remind us of the role models we had as children. How many children wanted to become doctors or soldiers because they saw in a profession a combination of knowledge and commitment that we later came to value in the adult world as well.

For me, this calls into question the idea that a political career necessarily has to become a separate, lifelong occupation.

I can accept politicians whom I would also be happy to welcome into my living room.

Those who can show not only knowledge, but enthusiasm and emotion. Those who are not afraid to stand before us as human beings. Those who show that a public figure is not some distant creature, but a member of society who should not be ashamed to reveal their weaknesses as well.

Because if someone is going to enter my living room, I want to know whom I have let in.

By: Viktor Szentkiralyi

Related background reading

What is a career politician? Theories, concepts, and measures
Cambridge Core – study

Chosen (not) to win? Party nomination strategies and the unequal class representation in parliament
Cambridge Core – study

Polity Size Matters? The Effect of Country Size on Politicians’ Professionalization
Cambridge Core – study

Leadership for a high performing civil service
OECD – publication