« Deficit hysteresis | Main | Taxing my patience »

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Can you make up a bit of the slack? That's what blogs are for...

(Not-so-secret secret: Journalists aren't very smart. And they aren't interested in policy. That's why they are journalists)

You hit the nail on the head bigtime. It's not only the MSM that gets into this rut, it's also all sorts of political bloggers (who have been getting a lot of attention in Q3/Q4 2008). For every MSM news bit that comes out about the campaign, I'll read a blogger saying that party X is losing momentum, etc.

Since when does campaign "momentum" have any effect on how a country is run? Does it matter even 1 little bit that someone's airplane needs to get fixed, is that really more important than understanding a party's stance on the military in the Arctic?

I've also been reading bits about party tussles inside the Liberals. Martin people vs. Chretien people, etc. I couldn't give a rat's fat ass about what former PM a Liberal MP candidate would like to have drinks with.

It's too bad that the topics of policy and governance are pretty much left off the table for discussion.

I know it sounds trite, but governing is about character, and not about policies. Reaction to events is a often a better predictor of policy behavior (aka Bush, as an imbecile). Scripted ideas are all well and good, but governing is less about these grand ideals than it is about how you react to opposition (to the ideas). Governments do not govern in a policy vacuum. To understand that the Liberal are greener than the conservative is easy -- they are, is that what is best for Canada, I don't know, and it is irrelevant, because the policies that a government gets to enact, are rarely those of its electoral program, not because they don't want to but because other priorities (financial crisis, etc) take precedent.

Most of the electorate is poorly equipped to understand the issues, I'm not saying that they are too stupid to vote but rather the issues are too complicated. I bet that most people who say that the electorate is smart have never in their life gone door to door to meet voters -- you should its en eye opener.


Good blog post.

Funny how those who get angry at the frequent rhetorical excesses and the bad science that gushes out of the mouths of environmental activists like David Suzuki, seem quite happy with the bad economic policy that "Trust me, I'm an economist" Stephen Harper uses to buy political support.

Confirmatory bias or simply pure, narrow self-interest as individuals define it?

“the latest campaign ad is analyzed from any number of angles — Will it work? Is it on-message? — except the most obvious: is it true?”

This is exactly the way the media covers global warming.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Search this site

  • Google

    WWW
    worthwhile.typepad.com
Blog powered by Typepad