I was having a conversation the other day with some like minded people about politics. It’s one of those subjects which we’re told do not make for polite conversation at the dinner table. Along with religion and sex…

The conversation began simply enough, discussing the current situation in Vanuatu, as the nation prepared for elections on 22 January. Soon enough the limelight had swung to the hard-to-avoid presidential campaigns of America. This is a nation which has so strongly influenced world development in the last 60 years. Hard to avoid? Lets be fair, few other nations have characters so colourful, making such bold and inflammatory statements with so much international attention. While many countries have boasted very rich or very intelligent as well as some less than smart leaders at various junctures in history, few do it with such a worldwide audience.

Spending time in a developing nation, keeping a finger on the pulse of world events, I couldn’t help but make the observation that by and large the world response to political campaigns appears surprisingly uniform. Despite obvious differences in development, economic situations, foreign affairs approaches and culture; it seems that people the world over react with alarming similarity. We respond with astonishing ferocity to an emotive statement: To an observation, followed by an inflammatory declaration of what must be done, we will judge a public figure’s entire value to the nation. Possibly even to the world.

This is a product, I’m sure, of our tendency to be carried away by the all too compelling narrative. In his comments on the subject, Brett McKay over at Art of Manliness notes that often in mass media:

Facts are provided, yes, but they’ve been culled and cropped and made to fit a certain, easily digestible narrative — usually one that matches the platform’s partisan leanings. What is said and what is shown tells one side of the story, but another is left out. Yet the story still makes visceral sense, so it’s satisfying.

On top of a proclivity to be easily swayed by narrative, we seem to have awfully short memories, swiftly forgetting corrupt or questionable practices once new promises are made. We have trouble recognising that just as leopards have great difficulty changing their spots, so those in power have great difficulty changing their bad habits. And short memory syndrome really does lead me to ask myself: how many of us actually take time to look into the history of the Mr T’s, Mrs H’s? How many simply swallow the information served on easy access media without further digging?

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

Winston Churchill

We frequently make snap judgements: founding our entire view of an issue on a moment when Mr. T declares that “these people must not enter!” We choose right and wrong in a moment. We decide the fate of the Mr. T’s and Mrs. H’s in the world by which of their inflammatory statements, designed entirely to catch our attention, best suit our personal (and too often narrow) view of how the world should be.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Winston Churchill

With the development of the internet as a day to day tool, our access to information, world news and events, to history, to detail, to opinion, has become massive. It is a great empowerment. It is a tool available to us which boasts a very broad and deep wealth of information. And we use it, but all-too-often only for a quick answer. We take our quick answers and build broad, shallow understanding of complex local, national and world issues. Very rarely do we take the time to dig a little deeper: we seem to prefer not to find out whether that soundbite truly is a 3 second summary of this person’s entire life work. The soundbite, served up so helpfully to us by that great news agency, is often as deep as we go. The world wide web of information’s sources are little more to us than a method for finding the nearest coffee joint, or the cheapest mail-order toy drone, or what Johnny’s latest relationship drama is.

As a high school student, to my dismay I was forced to learn how to investigate things. I recall at 15 years old, being encouraged in materials technology class to decide which materials to use, not simply by how they looked, but to find out how they were manufactured, what their strengths and weaknesses might be. How much structural integrity would they carry into my final product? Would they stand the test of time, or fail within a short time, because they were chosen on their appearance rather than their suitability for the job? This lesson, though intended to build good work habits for product development and creation, is one which applies to other parts of life too. If I’m heading off to vote, am I choosing based on an attractive rhetoric, or on the actual capability of the candidate?

So I find myself here, asking questions.

Having recently watched a nation go to the polls to choose it’s new government.

As the international news community is riveted to the presidential campaign of another nation at the other end of the world.

You can’t build your reputation on what you’re going to do.

Henry Ford

Are we choosing our leaders for their leadership capacity, for who they’ve proven they are?
Do character, integrity, skill, ethics, morals have any bearing?

OR

Are our nations, and the world, being led by those whose soundbites are most compelling,  those who have created the best story around their campaign, or on what they are going to do?

In the democratic world, we have a voice.

Where every person of legal age is entitled to vote, that person has a voice.

What are we voting for? Are we voting for some status quo? Or is positive growth something we expect demand from those we lend our support to?

What do you think?