The whole political process in a democratic environment nearly
ensures several things to me:
a) politician needs to look good in front of a lot of people
b) people expect perfection
c) people will only vote for a candidate with acceptable
imperfections.
[perfect imperfections]
d) people like idealism because ideals are perfect things,
untainted.
e) a polititian's *actual* amount of control/influence is
severely limited in an environment where there is give/take,
push/pull.
So therefore:
a) politicians must polish their image.
b) politicians must appear perfect.
c) their imperfections must be timed correctly at the revealing
and must be of the proper sort of imperfections to endear
themselves to the public
d) politicians must only speak of broad ideals that they cannot
directly control because:
e) anything they try to change they will likely be unable to.
If you notice most campaign promises, they _tend_ to be about
the exact things they can do nothing about.
They may have one or two things that they focus on that they
*can* effectively accomplish.
But the rest? are linking the image of themselves into the
ideals of the people that they wish to have vote for them. The
politician wishes for the best of all things, just like the
people who vote for him/her do.
So in short, they are typically voted in as "carriers of a
dream" but not actually changing much related to accomplishing
that dream.
I know I'm a little harsh on politicians. But they tend to make
promises they can't keep, and their principles are easily
acceptable humanistic principles in general, or they are ones
that are designed to reflect what a large enough portion of the
voting population already believe.
