All talk

Unusually, Matthew Parris's column today misses the point. He invites us to imagine a politician who eschews grandiose rhetoric about "vision" and "renewal" actually makes real improvements:

This woman and her philosophy could take the British electorate by storm. We would fast realise how sick we have become of the overblown and confessional rhetoric of the 21st-century political communications industry.

However, Matthew fails to ask the important question. Why do we have to imagine a politician who untangles the tax credit mess, introduces a sensible recycling policy and opens GPs surgeries at sensible times? Why don't such politicians actually exist?
You know my answer - it's because the sort of management expertise that would enable a politician to do such things is just unattainable. Almost no-one can manage big organizations from the top down.
In this sense, politicans do not choose "overblown rhetoric" rather than humble competence. Such competence is not available to them. Their rhetoric is an effort to cover up this fact, to offer the appearance of managerial competence in place of the substance thereof.
They are like those charlatan authors of self-help books who add "PhD" after their names. They hope that if they draw attention to illusory credentials, no-one will notice that they're offering nothing else. Vacuous talk is all they have.

Comments

[Tim Worstall]

Quite. There are some things that must be done centrally, by government, with the powers of compulsion that they alone (should) have.
The rest of it will probably muddle along better if we're allowed to build our own systems, from the ground up, to deal with problems as and when they arise.
Just a random choice from the current news headlines: I don't think we'd be trying to insist that those on unemployment benefit should take a job or training, if offered, in order to continue getting such benefit, if it were still locally run Friendly Societies providing said benefit.
I think those paying in their weekly insurance premium similarly locally would be doing some quite forceful insisting of their own (and no, I don't know how we get from here to there, nor do I know whether it's actually desirable or not. It's an example).

[dearieme, Ph D.]

Have you considered acupuncture?

[ortega]

You've got a point here.
But there could be one more reason. Maybe the qualities needed to be a politician (getting oneself high enough in the party ladder to have the power to make a difference, I mean) are totally different from those needed to be a good manager.
You need to be a charlatan to be elected and charlatans often make poor work and need to keep the spin on.
However, we, the poor citizens, keep waiting for one that will be the real one, the one with the miracle cure. Today it seems to be someone called Obama.

[Mark Brinkley]

If a politician can't manage anything effectively - the case for which you make effectively - doesn't mean they have to cover up this truth with hollow words about vision etc. It would be a breath of fresh air just to hear one them say "I'll try my best at managing the mess."