From a Wall Street Journal column by Joseph Epstein headlined “Leave ‘the American People’ Alone”:

In the Chicago where I grew up, all politicians were guilty until proven innocent, and few were ever proved innocent. I remember my father telling me that a seat on the Chicago City Council paid $20,000 a year, yet politicians spent as much as a quarter-million dollars to get one. “Doesn’t make sense,” my father would say, in a voice of comic naiveté, “just doesn’t make sense.”