The deception of Politicians in Government

To most people who lead regular lives, by that I mean people in the middle class working category who work 40+ hours a week, pay their taxes and respect the law of the land, the word politics is synonymous with lies, deception and broken promises. To people in the lower class working category, the perception is even worse. Politicians are regarded on the one hand as beacons of hope and on the other as the embodiment of lies, intrigue and abuse of power. To people in the upper class echelon – the business moguls, CEO’s and the filthy rich, politicians are seen as pawns, tools to be used in advancing personal wealth. Looking at all these different perceptions, one thing becomes immediately obvious, in no class are politicians regarded with respect. They are instead looked upon with disdain for trying to provide an important service to society, and this especially if they are directly involved with government.

Why is this the case? Most would agree that the mechanism of government is vital for the smooth operation and cohesive progression of society since any system must have a focal point from which the coordination and organisation of the system is exacted - or else they’ll be chaos. The government constitutes such a focal point and as such is of vital importance to the continued growth of any societal system. Growth in this case would mean that every member of society would enjoy equal access to economic wealth and prosperity. In other words, the distribution of wealth must be uniform. This clearly is not the case today with the gap between the rich and the poor widening daily. The wealthy upper class never had it so good while the poor and lower classes languish in abject misery. In a system that gets most of its sustenance from taxes levied on the middle and lower classes which together make up over 90% of the workforce, it beggars belief as to why the wealthy who make up less than 10% of the workforce should be allowed to make away with the spoils of growth and progress. That this should be allowed to happen is a bitter pill to swallow.

So who is to blame for this sorry state of affairs – the government of course! Who runs the government? The politicians! So why are politicians, despite their best intentions, the object of such vitriolic condemnation from the two most important work sectors of society – the middle and lower class?

To understand the answer it is probably best to consider as a case in point, one of the leading figures in British politics for the last 70 years – Tony Blair. In 1997 in the run up to elections and just before he took office, Tony Blair came across, without exception, as unique among politicians. His zeal and firm convictions of equality, justice and liberation were firmly etched on his face for all to see. There was a sense of hope for the future that was augmented by a landslide victory at the elections. As a politician there is no stronger statement of ones mandate than a landslide victory. Fast forward ten years to 2007. Tony Blair who has just left office – 23 days ago to be precise, cuts a very different picture from the bubbly, dynamic personality with positivism oozing from every pore that stepped into the Number 10 ten years ago. Today Tony Blair is a broken man, a figure of mockery both here in the UK and abroad. The reason for this is not because of the things he achieved while in office, and they were quite considerable. No, the reason is because of the things he promised to achieve but did not. The reason is because of the lies, the deceptions and the unilateral decisions he carried out in the face of all opposition and in direct contravention of his promise to listen to the voice of the people. The reason is because by the time he left office he had lost all respectability. The realities of office brought Tony Blair crashing back to earth, so that in the end, he became not “the unique politician” but an ordinary politician just like the rest of them.

So why did one of the world's most respected politicians leave office with his reputation in tatters? Did Tony Blair underestimate the enormous demands of his office? Did he underestimate the strength of government? Or did he simply overestimate his own ability to bring change to government and the people? The answer is that Tony Blair and all politicians for that matter, overestimate their ability to effect change in government and consequently society. This is in part due to ignorance in the art of governance and the dynamics of government, and partly due to mastery in the art of deception through the use of white lies.

The ignorance stems from the inability to recognise that any ideology becomes limited in expressing itself the moment it steps on to a given path. This is because a path by definition is constrained by the boundaries that define it. And these boundary conditions by default extend to anything that seeks expression on the path. Consequently, in relation to politics and government, the politics constitute the ideology and the government the path. Therefore every politician must use the tools of government to express their ideology with the result that the expression of any new ideology has the potential to be severely restricted in its expression. And so someone like Tony Blair comes in to office thinking that he has everything under control only to find that the task of supplanting the existing ideology with his own is a lot harder than anticipated. And this is where the white lies come into full play – the use of half truths, promises that couldn’t possibly be fulfilled in the time spent in office and the enactment of convoluted Bills that are made to look like something new and beneficial but in reality are no different from pre-existing Bills. These white lies are a blatant attempt by politicians in government to cover up their inability to fulfil the promises made on the campaign trail.

So why do politicians make promises that they know are likely to be broken since history has shown that this is what their predecessors get up to every time they find themselves running government? The answer – Greed and lust for Power! Politics is a career that demands servitude to the masses. Ironically politicians are less concerned with the servitude aspect as they are with enhancing their career prospects.

And so we come back full circle. What is the solution? One could argue that the fallibility of the human nature in a sense exonerates the human being from its actions, but only if the consequence of the actions adversely affect the lives of only a few people. Where it becomes inexcusable is when the actions have the potential to affect the lives of millions. In such a situation, total transparency is not only the best medium for running the top political job in the country, it also constitutes the direct link between the government and the masses. It is the only way government is likely to get support for any of the decisions it makes, since no major decision would be taken without the express will of the people. In this way politicians would be seen to perform their duties fully as it should be, in service to the people.