Of the People, From the People

Reclaiming leadership as shared experience, not specialized class.

Introduction: The Broken Mirror of Representation

Politicians talk often about “the people”. They name-drop hometowns, share curated origin stories, and claim to understand the struggles of everyday life. How many of them live anything close to the reality most Americans face? How many have navigated housing insecurity, worked a low-wage job without benefits, or balanced multiple caregiving roles while bills pile up? For too many in power, “the people” are a talking point, not a lived truth.

A political class has emerged that is increasingly detached from the country it claims to serve. Many elected officials are millionaires before running for office. Most have spent lives insulated by wealth, elite education, and powerful networks. The cost of running for office is high, and access to influence depends on one’s usefulness to the billionaires and party machines. As a result, those who govern are no longer reflective of the governed. They speak in place of the people, but they fail to speak for the people because they do not come from the people.

This disconnect is not just aesthetic. It is structural, and it has consequences. Policy becomes abstract. Lobbyists for billionaires and big business frame the impacts of decisions. Empathy becomes performative. Moral instincts begin to shift toward preservation of status, not the protection of people.

Here we will argue that true representation must be rooted in lived experience. A government “of the people” cannot be sustained by a narrow class of professionals trained in political theater and donor relations. It must include real people. Those who have been workers, caregivers, neighbors, and organizers. Those citizens who have felt the weight of the system firsthand. If we want a politics that reflects the public, we must start by returning public office to the public itself.

The Drift Toward a Political Class

Over the past several decades, a distinct political class has taken shape. Most elected officials are significantly wealthier than the general population. Many hold advanced degrees from elite institutions, and a large number follow nearly identical resource-intensive career paths. Law school, then work as a staffer or lobbyist, followed by a run for office. What was once considered public service has become a closed circuit of influence and ambition.

This pattern creates a government that looks less and less like the public it claims to represent. Members of Congress, for example, have a median net worth several times higher than the typical American household. Few have ever relied on hourly wages, public assistance, or community health clinics. Even fewer maintain close ties with those who still do.

These gaps matter. They created policy blind spots. Leaders who have never struggled with housing insecurity are less likely to grasp the urgency of the crisis. Those who have never lived with medical debt or with underinsured family members often underestimate the real-life stakes of healthcare policy. When leaders are too far removed from the consequences of failure, they become more prone to abstract thinking and less responsive to human need.

This distance also fuels a culture of performance. Political survival becomes about managing appearance, building alliances, and avoiding vulnerability. Listening takes a back seat to messaging. Service becomes secondary to strategy. Calculated and ham-fisted propaganda is presented to the public instead of authentic policy action. And the people who most need a functioning government are left unrepresented, unheard, and unprotected.

What We Lose Without Lived Representation

When the people in power do not share the lived experiences of the people they serve, something essential is lost. The gap is not only economic or educational. It is emotional, moral, and practical.

Empathy gaps begin to form when lawmakers have never had to juggle rent, childcare, shift work, and out-of-pocket medical costs all in the same month. Without firsthand understanding, it becomes easy to reduce people’s lives to numbers in a budget or assumptions in a policy memo. The result is leadership that lacks urgency on the very issues that define daily life for millions.

This distance contributes to policy failures. Too often, lawmakers advance systems that look good on paper but break down in practice. Safety nets are riddled with barriers. Programs are underfunded, overcomplicated, or built around distrust of the people they are meant to serve. At the same time, donor priorities rise to the top. Tax loopholes, deregulation, and subsidies for the wealthy are framed as economic wisdom, while basic support for workers is dismissed as unrealistic or unaffordable. As billionaires rig, defraud, and abuse the system, support of the people is seen as a waste. Personal enrichment and career advancement shape the agenda more than the public good.

All of this creates a moral deficit. Decision-making becomes an exercise in managing outcomes, not confronting human consequences. When a leader never has to live with the policies they pass, they are more likely to treat the job as a game of strategy. This erodes accountability and breaks faith with the public.

A government that lacks lived representation loses more than perspective. It loses trust, effectiveness, and its claim to moral authority.

What Representation Should Mean

Representation cannot mean speaking about the people from a distance. It must mean speaking from the people and carrying their experiences into rooms where decisions are made. Leadership should come from the community, not just claim to act for it.

The most effective representatives are those who have lived the issues they are entrusted to legislate. Someone who has navigated a broken healthcare system will bring urgency to reform. A worker who has faced wage theft or unsafe conditions will fight differently than someone who has only read about labor law in a policy brief. Lived experience changes how a leader sees the stakes and how seriously they take the job.

Representation should also reflect a broad diversity of class, profession, and geography. That means the broad scope of American life experiences. Teachers, caregivers, tradespeople, small business owners, immigrants, renters, and rural Americans. It means voices that understand what it is to rely on public transit, to live paycheck to paycheck, or to care for an aging parent while working full time. These experiences are not side notes. They are essential qualifications.

We should be governed by lifelong citizens, not lifelong candidates. The future depends on making space for people who feel called to serve and then return to their communities, not those who build entire careers climbing through party ranks and donor circuits. Public office should not be a profession. It should be a public trust. The response to a calling, and when that calling has been answered, room should be made for the new blood to be called.

When leadership is grounded in real lives, it leads to better policy, stronger accountability, and a government that can be trusted to serve all of us, not just the few who can afford it.

Counterarguments & Reframing

Some will argue that politics is too complex to be left to “normal people.” The claim is that we must rely on experts to navigate the machinery of government. There is truth in that. Expertise matters. That expertise should serve the public, rather than replace it. When specialists become entrenched, detached from the people their policies affect, the result is governance without grounding. Lived experience of the issues is not the opposite of expert knowledge. It is an essential form of it. The place for procedural experts is as advisory counsel to those who can synthesize and apply their knowledge with the wisdom that only comes from experiencing the challenges to be addressed.

Others will point out that most working people cannot afford to run for office. They lack the money, time, access, and connections required. That is not a reason to preserve the current system. Stewardship demands that we dismantle the structural barriers that keep ordinary citizens out of power. That means lowering campaign costs, expanding public financing, ending billionaire and corporate sponsorships of candidates, and creating a competitive electoral process that enables more than two tightly controlled parties. Through the adoption of ranked-choice voting or proportional representation, Stewardship promotes designing systems that make service accessible, less exclusive, and less vulnerable to favor-buying, which is essential to the restoration of public trust.

There is also the question of populism. Is this just another version of jealously raging against the elites? The answer is no. This vision is not about slogans or scapegoats. It is not about rage. It is about integrity and perspective. It is about ensuring that those who govern understand the impact of their choices because they have lived them. It is about building a government that reflects and is accountable to the country and its people.

This is not a rejection of knowledge, skill, or competence. It is a call to unite those qualities with perspective, humility, and service. We don’t need fewer capable people in office. We need more capable people who remember where they came from and who they serve.

Models and Movements

The idea of leadership rooted in lived experience is not new. History offers clear examples of public servants who brought real life into public office and left lasting marks because of it.

Harry Truman did not come from wealth or pedigree. Before entering politics, he was a farmer and a failed businessman. His decisions as president, including the bold choice to desegregate the military, were shaped by the grounded perspective of someone who had struggled, served, and seen hardship firsthand.

Barbara Jordan, born to a warehouse clerk and a teacher in segregated Texas, became a constitutional scholar and a moral force in American politics. Her voice during the Watergate hearing was powerful and trusted. She spoke from a place of integrity, rather than entitlement.

In recent years, we have seen a wave of new leaders emerge from outside the traditional pipeline. Iraq War veterans, nurses, teachers, bartenders, and community organizers stepped into the political arena after 2016, many bringing urgency to issues like healthcare, housing, labor rights, and democratic reforms. Their presence has reshaped the conversation. They have been exceptions to the rule, and under limitations and undermining of the two-party system, they remain exceptional outliers in their efforts.

Alongside these individual stories, there are broader efforts aimed at reforming the system itself. Public financing initiatives seek to reduce the influence of big money. Ranked-choice voting encourages more diverse candidates and better outcomes. Efforts to lower ballot access barriers and simplify filing processes make it possible for more citizens to run without needing party connections or large donors.

These examples prove that lived experience is not a limitation. It is a source of strength. When people from all walks of life enter the halls of power, the system becomes more responsive, more just, and more reflective of the country it claims to serve.

A System Built for Stewards, Not Stars

If we want leadership to reflect the people, we have to build a system that makes it possible for the people to lead. That means designing for accessibility, instead of gatekeeping. The current political infrastructure favors the wealthy, the connected, and the professionally ambitious. A system built for stewards must do the opposite. It must make space for those motivated by care, duty, and service.

This begins with lowering the entry barriers. Right now, just getting on the ballot can be a complex and expensive process. Reforming signature requirements, filing fees, and partisan gatekeeping would open doors to a wider range of candidates.

We also need civic education that prepares people for candidacy, taking the step beyond compliance and complaining that nothing can be done. Most people are taught how to follow the law, but not how to shape it. Schools, nonprofits, unions, and community organizations can play a role in helping everyday citizens understand how government works and how to participate in it meaningfully, including running for office.

One of the most corrosive features of the current system is the way wealth operates as a proxy for qualification. Fundraising is treated as a primary indicator of viability. This filters out working-class candidates before they ever reach the public stage. Public financing, campaign matching, and small-donor models are essential tools for leveling the field and refocusing campaigns on people rather than capital.

Finally, a system built for stewards must encourage rotation in service. Term limits are one tool, but we should address the deeper incentives that encourage permanent incumbency. That means rethinking political careers as permanent fixtures and focusing instead on policies and practices that make it easier to serve for a time, then return to ordinary life. Stewardship thrives when service is a tour of duty, rather than a residential destination.

A healthy democracy depends on leaders who remember who they are, where they came from, and who they serve. We can design for that. We must.

Closing: The Neighbor Principle

At the heart of stewardship is the belief that leadership should feel familiar. Not in the sense of casualness or comfort, but in the sense of moral proximity and authenticity. A steward should not feel like a distant figure carved from a different world. They should feel like a neighbor. Someone who sees the same problems, walks the same streets, and shares the same stakes.

The Neighbor Principle is simple. Those who govern should remain connected to the governed. Not just through polling or messaging, but through lived experience and shared accountability. A healthy democracy depends on leaders who do not stand above the people, but alongside them.

This does not mean we reject skill, ambition, or expertise. It means we root those qualities in service, not status. We elevate people who carry a sense of duty and decline entitlement. We create systems that make it possible for regular citizens, the teachers, nurses, workers, veterans, and caregivers, to step forward, serve well, and return home with dignity.

Rebuilding trust in government starts by rebuilding its foundation. That begins with the people. Real people. People we know. People like us.

If we want a politics that works for everyone, we must first believe that everyone belongs in politics. Not just as voters, but as stewards.