Posted by special_k on March 21, 2006, at 3:32:59
In reply to Meet the Candidate tonight -- liberal pragmatism, posted by Racer on March 20, 2006, at 23:19:51
> Tonight, in our complex, we had a candidate for City Council come to talk to us about why we should vote for him. That is, that's what he wanted to talk about... :-D
Heh heh.
> The first question I asked was about how he would plan to provide incentives for small, locally owned businesses to stick around during the current redevelopment of our area. His response was pretty much what I expected: "That's so important, yaddida yaddida" with zero zip nada about how he thought that would work. No actual plans. He did speak, mostly, about the things that people in the room seemed concerned with, adjusting topics to stay with what was on people's radar. (Although a couple of questions did kinda go past him.)
Yeah. He is a politician ;-)
People tend to like to hear things like:
I stand for honesty!
I stand for justice!
I stand for good old <insert relevant country> values!And not commit themself to more than they have to as to what they actually are going to do. I mean sometimes people campaign around issues... But then the issues are often things like 'A better deal for people!' It is a way of not losing votes by coming up with certain policies that people may disagree with, I guess.
> But you know what? I realized I don't mind that. In fact, I want a Politician, because I want someone who has experience, who has the connections made, someone who can do the back office finagling. Someone who can get the job done.
Er what job? I mean... Is he planning on doing anything in particular?
> I think I'm getting old...Nah. Trouble is that candidates can appear much the same after a while... And experience might tell you... That specific promices tend to get broken anyways...
I was pretty upset with some aspects of Labour's campaigning over here. IMO they tried the 'appealing to the lowest common denominator' thing... It worked (Helen got in) but... At what cost? I felt a bit embarrased for them...
E.g., National said that if they were elected they would hold a referendum on whether New Zealanders wanted to remain nuclear free or whether New Zealanders wanted nuclear power. Then... Well it was slightly unfortunate that the leader of National was quoted from somewhere (maybe tapped phone) as saying our nuclear free policy would be 'gone by lunchtime' if he was PM. Labour turned it into a fiasco... Saying that National wanted to have american warheads on our land. But National never said anything about wanting that. They only ever talked about holding a referendum on nuclear power (which is surely more democratic than not holding one!) It turned into a real fiasco... National leader kept saying it isn't about NUKES it is about POWER and I never said I would JUST DO IT I said I wanted a REFERENDUM. But... That didn't get heard. He had to back down after the election (he didn't do so well). He ended up saying... 'If I get to be PM there WON'T be a referendum on nuclear power...'
That is the kind of thing that makes me lose faith in democracy. Lose faith in peoples ability / willingness to vote on the issues rather than on... Popularity I guess. Who is the smoothest and slickest etc.
Sigh.
Apparantly... Education is the answer. Informed voters. Trouble with information is that... Politician's aren't so good at saying precisely what they are going to do 'improve healthcare! improve public schools! lowered taxes!' (really? how are you going to do the first two given the latter one? i'm not seeing a specific plan here) and where they are explicit they tend to change their minds once they are in.
sigh.
sorry... this wasn't so related to what you were saying. i didn't vote in the last election... didn't consider i was informed enough.
(just because we have the right... doesn't mean we have a duty. just because i have the right to have a sex change doesn't mean i have a duty)
;-)
and that isn't to undermine the pioneers that enabled me to vote / have a sex change should i so desire...
poster:special_k
thread:622723
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20060304/msgs/622760.html