In the talk leading up to the 2012 Quebec provincial election, I spoke about the possibility of running for office. My son was horrified.
“Why do you want to waste your time doing that? Politicians don’t do anything important anyway. Are you trying to lose my respect?”
Unfortunately, his comments reflect the opinion of too many people. So to try to change his mind, I’d like to mark the beginning of the 2012 general election with commentary about why politicians deserve our respect even when they blunder, lose or look stupid.
Politicians get a lot of grief. If they’re extremely successful, they get to be the least knowledgeable person in a government ministry with the impossible task of communicating and defending everything it does. They have to learn enough about finance, education, health, transportation, energy, governance, culture or tourism to set the policy for experts while being constantly criticized for mistakes those same experts make. They have to manage large complex teams of people while being deprived of sleep, all in the public eye.
Whether they get into government or not, winning politicians have to set up a local constituency office and try to help people in their ridings wade through government bureaucracy at all levels while avoiding making enemies so they can keep fundraising to get re-elected four or five years later. They have to deal with the whiners and the brilliant as though they’re all the same.
The winners must collaborate with colleagues with whom they don’t agree, without ever showing their disagreements publicly. Those with experience have to defend every decision the party made during their tenure, regardless of whether they personally supported those decisions. Those who are new have to act as though they could have solved any problem ever faced by any previous government if only they’d been in charge at the time.
Losers have an even tougher job. After setting aside five weeks of their life to work harder than they’ve ever worked before to get judged by their peers and then ridiculed for their service, they have gracefully thank the public for voting in the other guy and then restart their lives as if nothing ever happened.
The whole level of bravado is ridiculous. It’s a wonder that anyone runs. And yet they have.
I have to say that I’m glad that I didn’t choose to join them too. I like to think it’s because I don’t have any experience in the field or because I’m not confident that my French is good enough to adequately represent constituents in the National Assembly. The real reason is much simpler than those excuses.
I’m a coward.
