kevin@client1.DRETOR.UUCP (Socrates) (08/16/89)
In article <28363@watmath.waterloo.edu> rwwetmore@grand.waterloo.edu (Ross Wetmore) writes: >But, 'political suicide' is a common expression in Canada, right? >And the murder weapon is the ballot box, not so? > Even more repulsive is the fact that 'political suicide' is more often than not due to issues unrelated to good government or popular policy. Turner and Hart come to mind. If we ever had an election based solely on government issues and qualifications of the candidate there would be some big surprises indeed. (Pure conjecture of course. This won't happen for at least another 50 years, when we have sorted out the mess we currently find ourselves in.) >Maybe this would make the party images a little less amorphous >and help to distinguish them. > If a party really wanted to distinguish themselves all they would have to do is to only make election promises that were possible, and then make damn sure that they fulfilled them all in their term. Unfortunately the siamese twins can't seem to do this and no one else can ever get enough support to be given a chance. -- --- Kevin Picott NTT Systems, Inc., Toronto, Ontario "There can be no offense where none is taken" - Japanese Proverb kevin@zorac.dciem.dnd.ca, or on some sites kevin@zorac.ARPA
steven@enel.ucalgary.ca (Steven Leikeim) (08/19/89)
In article <2410@client1.DRETOR.UUCP> kevin@client1.dciem.dnd.ca (Socrates) writes: >If a party really wanted to distinguish themselves all they would have to >do is to only make election promises that were possible, and then make damn >sure that they fulfilled them all in their term. Unfortunately the siamese >twins can't seem to do this and no one else can ever get enough support to >be given a chance. But most of the election promises that they would be likely to keep would generate a lot of flak for them. Take the following case: A party states that the ecomony is in a mess, and to help fix the mess they would have to raise the gas tax a lot. A different party states that this is utter nonesense, and promises that if they are elected, they absolutely will NOT raise the gas tax. Question: Who gets elected here? 2nd question: What happens to the gas tax? The second party gets elected and they raise the tax MORE than the first party said they would have raised the taxes. This actually did happen when Joe Who (oh sorry, Clark) was leader of the Conservatives and had just been defeated in a vote of non-confidence due to a minority government. Needless to say, he was defeated in the next election. Why am I not suprised that few politicians are willing to say what they are REALLY going to do when they get in office. Steven Leikeim | University of Calgary | There are lies, damned lies, Department of Electrical Engineering | and statistics. .uunet!{ubc-cs,utai,alberta}!calgary!enel!steven