I’m sure I’ve already complained about my frustration with politicians distancing themselves from responsibility for the decisions they make.  Honestly, if you want to wield power, at least take responsibility for the actions you take with that power!  If things go wrong there should be a reasonable explanation for what happened, if those actions were done correctly.  And that’s probably the core problem.  There may be no justifiable reason, in terms of the population the politicians represents, for either the action itself or for the way it was carried out (I’m talking about who was employed to carry out the actions and the method/s used).  When power outsources action,  if everything goes to hell they feel justified in blaming someone else. 

The above behaviour is old political news.  I first noticed this trend in the 1980’s. So let’s talk about a newer bad habit we let politicians get away with.  This is when politicians dodge questions by giving prepared speeches instead of addressing the issue they were actually asked about.  Why aren’t they called out on this behaviour far more often?

What if the interviewer finished the interview by outing politicians failures during the interview, for example summarising which questions were dodged, how many times etc.  Perhaps we won’t be able to shame politicians into changing their behaviour, because honestly how many politicians have any sense of shame left, but maybe we can encourage the public to see them more clearly?

Similarly if a politician is blatantly lying or contradicting their own previous statements, this could be summarised at the end of an interview.  Surely the interviewer has some power to set the record straight?  I would suggest summarising after the politician has left the interview and can’t interrupt.

Please feel free to share any of your own similar frustrations or thoughts on how we can expose this sort of behaviour.

Alison