Politicians – some thoughts

It takes a special someone to be a politician. Politicians need to be smart, well spoken and most of all be able to lie with a straight face. Lie might not be the right word here, because per def. politicians do not lie. They talk about hopes, opinions and make promises to try their best. Good politicians do not make promises they cannot keep without a pigeonhole which they can wriggle out of at a later time.

And politicians need to be able to tell people what they want to hear. Imagine a politician being candid for a change:

- Increasing gas prices is the result of large corporations scheming to squeeze every last drop out of the consumers savings account and make no mistake about it. It has nothing to do with the market and established economic theories, because that does not sound nearly as good, and we need someone to blame. Lets even pass a law or two just so that the imaginary scheming can become even more illegal - it’s all bollocks, but we make it sound good, don’t you think?

- Climate change. Yes we are doing everything we can to battle climate change. Just yesterday we gave a donation to this company who is doing everything they can to battle climate change, by buying services from a company who is battling climate who is in turn battling climate change by buying services from a company who is battling climate change by buying carbon emission quotas at from whoever offers them cheapest. It is true that the net reduction in carbon dioxide equals zero and it is really a ‘get out of jail free card’ on our account. And we could get even more of those if we cut a few of the links in the chain, but…

- Even though the groundwork for the good numbers shown in today’s report was laid by the previous government (incidentally with a completely different policy) we take full credit for the growth and progress. But yesterdays report portraying a grim picture in one of our main focus areas is all the previous government. Even though we have been working on improving it for the last year and a half. Consistency is not really a big thing with us as long as it makes us look good.

Now don’t get me wrong: I have tremendous respect for (some) politicians, and they do get results from the work they do. People do not always agree on the result being the right one, but that does not diminish the result itself. What I do not like is the way politicians take credit for something they had little to no hand in getting through, give blame away when they had a finger in the play, and tell people what they want to hear even if they know that the right way (and the one they intend to take) is something else – and all because someone has convinced them that the voter is dumb.

I would love to see the politician who had the basic view that the voter is not dumb and could in fact be explained as opposed to given a tale to reach a given goal. But I have a feeling those are the politicians who end up as grey and boring politicians working in the background with no media coverage or they end up in private sector making considerably more money than they would in politics. It takes a special someone to be a politician – I’m just not sure it’s always the right someone.

This post brought about by an entry over at morghus.com