Can We Ever Trust Our Leaders?
A good party person puts their party above themselves and their country above their party.
Winston Churchill, surely one of the greatest politicians of the 20th century, is reputed to have said, “A good party person puts their party above themselves, and their country above their party.”
Sadly not all politicians operate on this basis. Many seem to want the top job that their political system offers - president, prime minister or whatever - to satisfy their own personal ambitions, not to serve the best interests of the country they have been elected to lead.
It seems to me that a big part of the problem lies in the fact that a substantial part of the electorate - folks just like you and me - cast their votes in favour of those politicians that they feel will support policies of direct benefit to that voter.
What happens, of course, is that the campaigning politician makes electoral promises that he never intends, or will be able, to keep. Once he gets elected he claims, for example, that the previous government has made such a mess of things that the new government cannot afford to make good their promises. We’ve all seen it happen all too many times.
Currently, of course, we are seeing the political tragedy that has unfolded in the United Kingdom. A prime minister came into office having promised the world to the electorate (a very small percentage of the real electorate in this particular case) and, in effect, having offered a menu without prices.
The financial markets soon saw through those plans and the ensuing financial turmoil has been plain for all to see. Soon enough the newly-elected prime minister has been forced to resign, leaving the country in yet another power vacuum and with the very real possibility of continuing political chaos.
Once again, the senior politicians in the government are jockeying for position and, I wonder, how many of them are advocating one particular candidate for the top job in the hope that such support might end up with their own appointment to a senior position in a new government.
Where to from here? Is the whole system based on greed and self-interest? It does tend to look that way. Having said that, history show that there are people who put the country’s interests before their own self-interest. Can anyone spot who the next altruistic prime minister might be?