Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Something Our Current Poltical Leadership should Consider

I am currently reading a Biography of Herbert Hoover by Eugene Lyons.  I ran across something on page 83 of that book that startled me. I went to the web and confirmed it's truth.  As you read the paragraph below, ask yourself the question I thought about.  What would happen if all our political leaders were to follow this example?

"From that day forward Hoover never accepted for his private use a dollar in payment for any of his manifold public services.  He paid his own travel and out-of-pocket expenses.  His salaries as Secretary of Commerce, and then as President, went into a special fund for disbursement in full for charitable causes, to raise wages of aides who needed it, or to pay for expert personnel not provided by official budgets.  Money that came to him for writing or speaking went likewise to private charity and public causes."  Then in the next paragraph Lyons speaks of his associates on the committee for Belgian Relief  "...they lived by his Quaker dictum that public service is a God-given privilege, not a business."

I wonder "what if?"