It recently occurred to me that we select our government using a popularity pole. Much like voting for the winner of a Beauty contest, we vote for the ‘most attractive’ politician. Even when we pay more attention to what they’re selling rather than how they say it, the process of selecting our future governors is little better than that of a job interview. That is to say someone presents their best side in short, artificial interactions and we have to decide whether to give them the job or not based on how they interview, rather than how they do the job.

The result is very much the same as for job interviews. We may be able to check some things about what they tell us, we can look them up ‘online’ and may contact people who can talk about them (though why we would trust their nominated referees I’m not sure). What we get is someone who is good at interviews not necessarily at doing the job they’re being interviewed for. (And research has proven that interviews are not good predictors of capacity to actually do the job!)

Of course sometimes the candidates have done the job before, so we have their track record to look at, for at least some of the candidates. But even then we’re usually comparing them to an unknown competitor. So how do we decide who will do the best job and who is telling us some kind of truth about what they plan to do and if they can actually do it?

Currently we choose politicians according to the brief advertising like messages they try to sell us about themselves and what they think we want to hear. We often get promises about our personal finances, education and health. But, more than anything else we get politicians telling us what they think we want to hear and placing the pursuit of power over any personal beliefs they may have.  Most politicians need for power is so important to them that they will stretch and change the truth trying to find whatever message will convince voters to keep them in power.

Winston Churchill famously said that Democracy is a terrible system of government, but better than any other system on offer (http://www.wisdomtoinspire.com/t/winston-churchill/41XI2ZXK). Perhaps we just aren’t able to create a better system. I’ve often thought a benign and enlightened monarchy would provide better government. Unlike our current crop of politicians (who believe it’s only the next election, and their personal hold on power, that matters) at least a monarch plans to be around to reap the consequences of any decisions made.

 

 

Of course not all nations use the same method of government.

Below: A world Map of Government Methods

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Forms_of_government.svg   (2006)

So why do we stick with this terrible system? And what is it we actually want or need from a governing politician?

Primarily we need people of vision, who can see the real, long term impact of policies on our countries future, as well as the short term impacts on our everyday lives. We need government to guide our country to future prosperity, health, equality and mutual respect. Over riding all this, as inhabiters of this planet, we are facing a number of major challenges if we wish to survive and live here comfortably. I think we need our government to start by addressing the biggest threats and work backwards from there.

As with Maslow’s hierarchies of need we should start with food and shelter needs before looking at comfort, social, emotional and spiritual needs. It doesn’t matter what you earn if there’s nowhere to live. It doesn’t matter who’s in power if there’s not enough water or arable land to sustain life for the country’s population. (Remember – We can only go without breathable air for minutes, without drinkable water for days and without edible food for weeks.)

Below: A Diagram showing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs

Underpinning this vision we need people who understand how to actually put these visions into practice. We need people who can run the country successfully, whilst paying attention to all the necessary implementation details implied by the visions.

I’m not saying it’s an easy job, but it will never get done if our politicians are so distracted by the need to retain their own power they are unable to focus on achieving the job we elect them for!

Below: A final comment from Winston Churchill

 

Alison