Broken Promises and Kissing Babies

We’re in the midst of a provincial election here, so you know all the politicians involved are out making “the rounds.”

The rounds is what the news media often refers to as photo opportunities – shaking hands, kissing babies and standing behind some fancy podium making promises which will most likely be broken and forgotten.

The two opposition parties are running campaign commercials attacking the current party in power’s broken promises.

I laughed when I first saw this – then shook my head.

It is an old and common form of attack during an election. And it is the easiest and cheapest method too.

All politicians – ALL POLITICIANS – did I say ALL POLITICIANS make promises which they either know they will not keep, or they truly want to keep, but because life happens, they eventually don’t.

So, because all politicians break their election promises to a degree, it is a cop out to attack each other on this front.

Why not raise issues which really matter to people instead? Oh wait – maybe you just don’t have any idea as to what the people really want?

That’s why politicians attack each other’s previous commitments – because they don’t have the wisdom, the insight, the forethought and the drive to go out and really find out what us voters want.

Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians actually came to your door asking for more than just your vote and to put an election sign on your front lawn?

Imagine a politician actually caring what YOU – the eligible voter really wants?

But then again, since all politicians break their promises, you’d probably never see whatever you wanted anyways. It would end up just another election issue, which falls through the cracks once the government gets under way.

And pollsters try to figure out why voter turnout keeps dropping to appalling levels. Maybe if the pollsters actually listened to the crap that comes out of there media-over-handled political-wanna-be-leaders, and then watched the fallout after the election was long gone – maybe we’d have some serious change.

And change is what we really need. We need more than issues that don’t affect people en-mass as much as the politicians tell us. We need more than broken campaign promises which fall through only to resurface as campaign issues during the next election.

We need a better system for doing governance in this country.

Kissing babies and shaking hands might have worked in years gone-bye – but it won’t make the world rotate in today’s high-tech, over-populated, under-funded world.