Blog: A Guide To Embracing Politicians

Politicians have it tough. They have to put up with the hard parts of fame, like being surprised in public by political comedians with cameras, without the good parts like producing any music we like to listen to, or movies we like to watch. But I think the two-party system is good; I think the stage-like atmosphere of the parliament floor enables one group to keep another honest, without any unwanted side-effects, like the inflation of ego that goes along with the fact that question time is televised (which doesn’t make anyone any more right, it only makes them seem more right).

Despite what everyone believes, politicians are good people. Also, they are usually required to be educated at least till year 12, and in some cases beyond. One or two have even been educated at foreign universities that no-one can pronounce. This alone gives them a chance at being good at running a country. Travelling overseas is hard. The people there are not like us. Their very body odour tells us that. Putting up with this is hard enough, but when combined with university, the challenge becomes insurmountable. If politicians can not only surmount it, but come home afterwards without running out of money, then the rest of us should be happy to put the keys of the nation in their hands and not expect things they are not capable of like independence and decision making and self-doubt.

The trick with politicians is not to focus on how much they irritate you, but to focus on what aspects of them do not irritate you. For instance, my favourite thing about politicians is that if they do something scandalous, I always find out about it; my neighbours could do almost anything and I would never find out about it. If you look at it that way, politicians are more open. What impressed me most the first time I met a politician in person was how they displayed their true personalities, without the unconvincing smiles more familiar from their television appearances. In person, they respect us enough to not even try to pretend to be something they are not; instead they merely behave as if you were not there on a school trip to parliament house, and they were actually somewhere else, with someone more significant, and nothing they said could possibly make a difference; primarily because you are a good ten years away from voting age, and the age of consent. Therefore politicians are an honest sort of people in that they do not generate niceties when they do not mean them, which they never do.

So I think recent calls to give politicians any real power are worth considering.

B.C