HERE is how politics is "supposed" to work. Party leaders make a whole bunch of promises (tax cuts/spending increases) before an election, only to discover, when in office, that a closer inspection of the books/global crisis/natural disaster (select the most plausible) prevents them from following through on their plans. Repeat the process often enough and you get voter cynicism.
Whose fault is this? We can blame ourselves as voters for believing unfunded promises. In practice, however, a lot of people don't swallow the propaganda. So perhaps an honest politician might have success by saying "Look, I don't control the global economy. If the Middle East blows up, or China crashes, or the Federal Reserve tightens policy too far, then the economy will slump no matter what I do. So I'll try not to be corrupt, make the trains run on time and not drive employment-creating businesses away, and maybe we'll be lucky." But no one has the chutzpah to adopt such a strategy.
In practice, however, something else has happened. As the appeal of the traditional centre-right and centre-left parties has declined, the new challengers that have emerged have taken a different tack. The fault, they say, is with the corrupt establishment and with "others" - foreigners, bankers, international creditors, religious minorities and the like.
Admittedly, that is an...Continue reading
No comments:
Post a Comment