Tis The Season To Be Snappy

I am not a political beast at all. I used to be; in fact I even worked for a political organization in the dim and distant past. I’ll let you guess which one but needless to say there was never one called The Pinko Commie Limey Bedwetter Party, at least not to my knowledge anyway, so don’t go jumping to any erroneous conclusions.

 

Even back in the 80’s I was always enthralled from afar by the US elections. They seemed to display all that was good and bad in politics. Great debates (sadly less so now as candidates are afraid of blowing their chances and some horribly dirty and negative campaigning that would have Machiavelli spinning in his grave. That’s twice in 2 posts recently that I have mentioned Machiavelli, I wonder if that has some Freudian significance.

 

These days I do dust off my old interest and start to perk my ears up a bit when we get close to a general election. Mainly because I am absolutely fascinated (and appalled) by the dirty campaigning embraced by all parties. I also love to watch the leading candidates and try and work out from their body language what they are meaning rather than what they are saying. One of the cool things with life coaching and NLP in particular is that to be successful you really need to be able to read peoples body language, tone of voice and general mannerisms. Politicians are tough to read because they are usually very well trained and have speeches written with the kind of cunning that Dick Dastardly usually reserved for the Ant Hill Mob, so the words themselves and even the delivery are often not much of a clue.

 

I started this Blog with the intention of talking about body language but I’ve changed my mind because as I took a breath and re-read that first bit I started thinking about the negative campaigning. Here is the deal with it.

 

Politicians all say they hate it.
The public says they hate it.
Experts say it harms the American political system.
Yet all politicians still do it.

 

How does that work then?

 

I wonder what would happen if some brave candidate refused to try and embarrass, humiliate, demean and belittle an opponent. If they stuck to their policies and didn’t respond to personal attacks and underhand methods backed up by outrageous stunts and advertisements that would make Goebbels blush.

 

Only about half the people that are registered to vote in the US do so, I wonder why that is? Maybe it’s because they are sick to death of the way politicians conduct themselves and feel that they are wasting their time. Maybe then the way is clear for some candidate to make a stand on positive issues rather than winning by default after making their opponent look slightly less unelectable than they do.

 

I doubt that the above will happen though because it would require courage, decency and a sincere belief that the American people are able to make a considered informed and intelligent decision based on policies. Unfortunately, those qualities appear to be absent in most career politicians that I see. Let the mudslinging and bickering commence.

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