I suffer from the delusion of responsible politics.  I like to assume that politicians tell us exactly what they are about, what they will and won’t vote for, and they do everything in their power to get their agenda accomplished. Unfortunately these expectations, rather than making me a political guru, make me naïve. The sad fact is, a lot of politicians are involved for personal gain and ego, and making behind the scenes deals is how policy gets passed.

Not only does this system discourage integrity, but the majority of the population does not take the time to examine these politicians. Often, politics devolves into presentation to appeal to those who refuse to learn what a candidate’s track record is, or what they have actually accomplished. It’s a system that does not hold politicians accountable to the principles of the constitution, but willingly confers power over every aspect of American life to well-dressed strangers.

Politics has become a place to be someone famous for just being. An excellent example of this is the 2009 decision of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to bestow their prize onto then-recently elected President Obama. Obama is a great politician. He is well-spoken, has a beautiful wife (with an expansive garden at the White House), and two lovely children.  He campaigned his way into office on a platform of hope and change — intangibles that lit up the faces of those who did not bother to learn how he planned to achieve them and shrugged off his lack of political experience in favor of the wordy rhetoric offered instead.

The fact that Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, after doing essentially nothing in office except spending taxpayer dollars on a massive stimulus (unrelated to global peace whether you supported it or not), is unnerving. Here is a politician, receiving a prestigious global prize just for being. The press release from the prize committee cited his creation of “a new climate in international politics.” It further states “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” Let’s summarize: Obama wins because he’s a pretty cool dude and people like him.

Whatever ideology one subscribes to, politics is a dirty game. It’s about how you talk and what you wear and who you know and how you can present yourself to a primarily apathetic populous who don’t bother to learn the issues, but know that they think you’d do a better job because you promised them you would. It’s a voter base that believes you must be doing the best thing for them because you look like too nice of a guy to slowly but surely cut away at the freedoms and principles that made this country great — and a voter base that, for the most part, won’t check to see if that’s true.

If you are familiar with Michigan, you are familiar with construction season. The four months of the year in which the air is not frigid but is instead filled with the incessant buzzing of hammers and the landscape becomes flecked with bulbous orange cones. Driving through one such construction zone on U.S. 10, however, I noticed a marked difference. The pounding that usually fills my ears was quiet, and the giant cones seemed rather unobtrusive. They were not filling the potholes of the road, but replacing highway signs.

While I have had the problem of rattled teeth due to the occasional gaping abyss down our highways, I have never experienced difficulty with these signs. They are visible, bright, reflective signs that always tell me that I’m close to home. And yet, here is the Michigan Department of Transportation, removing them.  What’s worse, they were being replaced with the exact same sign.

So I called up MDOT.  The Office of Communications at MDOT was polite, concise and well organized. I was told by a calm, soothing voice that the signs did not meet the reflectivity and breakaway guidelines set by the federal government, and that the federal government therefore was requiring them to be replaced.

I asked the soothing voice if she thought this was really that important. She told me that federal funds were paying $1.6 million of the $1.8 million required to replace signs everywhere in Michigan, not just U.S. 10. I then asked the soothing voice if she thought there were more important things the money could go toward. She told me that the funds were non-transferable, and that the state of Michigan could only use them for these signs. I asked the voice, one last time, if she thought MDOT could have found a better use for $1.8 million.

Finally, in between explanations of non-transferable funds, she answered my question with, “Well, that’s not for me to say.” Which is really the flaw in most big government schemes. These types of decisions should be localized, because the locals know what the locals need. I don’t think I have ever heard of a sign being a problem in Michigan, in reflectivity or breakaway. I have, however, felt the unsettling sensation of my poor Ford sinking into a feebly patched highway. But the federal government decided that the best way to improve my driving experience in Michigan was $1.8 million worth of new, shiny signage.