"We previously listed some of the most admired leaders of both the left and the right and we noted that all of them came from safe seats. In the case of someone like Margaret Thatcher, it was a deliberate choice to give her a Tory safe seat. And safe seats help create great leaders, since it allows those leaders to focus on leadership, rather than having to think about elections. In other words, over the last 300 years, to the extent that the democracies have had good leadership, this has been achieved through a bit of engineering, where the system grants certain leaders lifetime posts, while pretending to do something different."
OK, but how's that working out in the US Senate, or even in the House? It has worked out, at times in the past - there was decent leadership there on occasion. But at the moment, we still have people who pretty much have safe seats, but the leadership is... rather lacking.
Exactly the same as Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, everyone eventually faces some defeat and decides they are old enough that it is time to resign.
"We previously listed some of the most admired leaders of both the left and the right and we noted that all of them came from safe seats. In the case of someone like Margaret Thatcher, it was a deliberate choice to give her a Tory safe seat. And safe seats help create great leaders, since it allows those leaders to focus on leadership, rather than having to think about elections. In other words, over the last 300 years, to the extent that the democracies have had good leadership, this has been achieved through a bit of engineering, where the system grants certain leaders lifetime posts, while pretending to do something different."