Truth Or Dare?

The Great Debate
"You're going to kill medicare." "No I won't, you will. "No you
will""No you will" "Liar" "Your mother wears army boots"

It’s election campaign time in the United States, as well as, in the province of Quebec up here in the land of beavers and dreamers. Last year, we muddled through a federal election in Canada and a provincial election in Ontario. It seems that just about every year now, somewhere, some group of fast-talkers is out there telling us that they can lead us to the Promised Land.

We never get there, of course, no matter whom we elect and I’ve begun to believe that the last person who kept a promise about leading people to the Promised Land was Moses and even he took his own sweet time getting there. 

It’s not for lack of promises, of course. We’ve had lots of those. In fact, we keep getting the same promises every election and pretty much from everyone, regardless of political stripe.

You can almost do them by rote, can’t you?

“Change for the better” / “Change you can believe in” / “It’s time for a change”

“We will increase spending on health and education while reducing the deficit”

“We will cut taxes” / “freeze taxes” / “promise not to raise taxes" - "and reduce the deficit"

“We will bring more integrity to government and reduce the deficit"

“We will reduce the cost of delivering public services and reduce the deficit”

“We will invest in sustainable energy and create ‘green’ jobs which will reduce the deficit” 

“We will create jobs and reduce unemployment  to create new prosperity and reduce the deficit”

“We will get tough on crime and reduce the deficit”

The promises almost never get kept and the deficit only travels one-way; Up!

There are a few party-specific promises to keep the faithful in line, of course, but mostly it’s just the same tired old stuff. You never hear a politician stand up during an election and say, “Folks, we’re in shit up to our eyeballs and we need to do something about it. Here’s your choices, pick a few you can live with and let's get 'er done.”

Instead, it’s always the other guys’ fault and only ‘our guy’ has the solution. That applies, by the way, even if ‘our guy’ is running for reelection and was responsible for the last four years of mismanagement, economic erosion, unemployment and basically not keeping the promises made in the previous election.

Dalton McGunity, the Premier of Ontario is the poster boy for that circumstance.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGunity, a politician that
wouldhave made Tammany Hall cringe

Mr. McGuinty, who promised 'strong action', is a politician who broke 75 election promises in the first six months of his first term, has watched his province’s credit rating get downgraded and has run up the largest deficit in the history of the province. That is fairly strong action but I doubt it is what the electorate had in mind when they voted for him.

He has seen the squandering of billions on eHealth, Ornge Air Ambulance Services, Ontario Lottery and He is now in his third term in office. Not only has Mr. McGuinty managed to turn Ontario from the country’s richest into a ‘have not’ province, he has accumulated more debt than all of the previous Ontario premiers combined. 

But for many of the sleep walking in Ontario, Mr. McGuinty is ‘our guy’ and they blindly mark their ‘x’ beside his name at election time because they blindly believe his latest promises which were, as it turns out, the promises he broke after the last election.

It gets tiresome, doesn’t it? 

Wouldn’t you just love to have an election campaign where the candidates actually told the truth and only made promises they knew they could keep? Of course, we probably wouldn’t believe them. It takes a bit of time and effort to rebuild trust but wouldn’t it just be grand if we sort of got started on that track again? Besides, we’re so used to them lying to us, we probably wouldn’t believe them if they did voluntarily tell the truth.

So…..I have a solution. (I’m always looking for ways to make things better for us all)

I suggest that instead of campaign advertising and televised debates we try something new. I call it Truth or Dare (with a nod to Madonna). 

Strap 'em lads. We have our buzzers
at the ready.

It’s a simple concept really. We simply put as many chairs on a traveling stage as there are candidates and tour it around the country or province (state) with the candidates. Each chair would be hooked up to a lie detector and each candidate strapped into it at all candidates meetings which would all be televised. (No election advertising would be permitted; the televised town halls would be all that’s necessary.)

Each candidate would be permitted an opening and closing statement to outline their party’s platform followed by a question and answer session. People would ask each candidate a question and the lie detector would evaluate the truthfulness of his or her answer and the results would be emblazoned across large television monitors. 

We could get Maury Povich to host the interrogations….I mean….question and answer sessions. To make it more interesting for the candidates and the electorate, the studio audience could have little handheld devices with a red button. Every time a candidate lied, you could push the button and give him or her a little jolt of electricity.

Perhaps enough electroshock might just jolt some sense into some of them or in the alternative numb them to the point where they couldn’t do any more damage to the country.

I know some of you may find that silly but how much less silly is it than the dog and pony shows we have now?

Another 90 minutes of talk that
signifies absolutely nothing!

Nothing that is advertised, nothing that is said during a debate bears any resemblance to what is actually going to happen. In fact, little of it bears any resemblance to what is needed. More time and effort is spent on selecting the correct colour of tie or suit to wear on television than is put into developing serious strategies to govern a province or a nation.

Pauline Marois, leader of the Party Quebecois for example, is running around the province of Quebec fighting the election of twenty years ago. Her province is the highest taxed jurisdiction in North America, has been hijacked by political corruption in the construction industry and is facing a more than serious financial deficit. What is Mme Marois talking about? Why protecting the French language from English, of course. Ms Marois is of the opinion that taking away some more basic rights from Anglos is more important than the economic stability of her province or respect for the rights of all citizens. Just for good measure, she tossed in a bit of British monarchy bashing because she hasn't quite forgiven the British for kicking ass on the Plains of Abraham 250 years ago.

PQ Leader Pauline Marois - hand me a buzzer

I’d love to get her into a Truth or Dare chair on the stage. I wouldn’t care what her answers were; I’d be pressing that red button like a kid with ADD and a hand cramp.

Imagine how much more fun the Presidential Election campaign in the United States would be if the candidates knew that there were 350 million people waiting, shock buzzers in hand, to hear what they have to say and what promises they’re prepared to make. It would make the Hunger Games look like a church social.

It won’t happen though. We’d rather beat up each other than those who actually lie to us because when they do, at least for a few minutes, we can delude ourselves into believing that everything is going to be ok. We can have our entitlements bought with borrowed money and we’ll be ok. Unemployment will disappear, poverty will be eradicated and the Iranian government will apologize for scaring everyone and cancel its nuclear program.

Sadly, these days, sometimes illusions are all you have left.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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