Training Politicians

It is relatively simple to train things.  When they do something you want them to do you give them some reward.  When you don't want something you withhold that reward.  Repeat.

Either you know about the US presidential campaigns, or you don't care.  In the first case there are plenty of places to go to get detailed analysis and news elsewhere of a higher standard than I could provide.  In the second case you just don't want to read about it.  So this isn't a rant about the campaign, or a partisan attack on one of the candidates, or a look at any promise or plan.  This is more about the electorate.

There have been two presidential debates in which almost universal opinion has Romney winning the first debate and Obama the second one.  The reasons on both occasions for the victory has been described openly as body language (active, fired-up, aggressive), basically the winner of the debate was the guy that looked the most like an alpha male, the primitive concept of a tribal leader.

However, there has also been another difference that has been rarely mentioned.  In the first debate Romney flat out lied.  Liar, liar pants on fire.  Obama wasn't a shining example of truthfulness himself.  Here's an independent fact check on that debate.  In the second debate there was a drop in dishonest claims overall.  Obama was the less truthful, (as long as you consider changing a policy position as not being dishonest) although Romney was no beacon of purity.

OK, so politicians trying to get elected lied.  This isn't news, right?  I agree, it isn't news.  What for me is illustrative is that the politician who lied the most won in popular opinion.  This illustrates that lying works, it helps to get you elected.  If you tell the truth, particularly when it is uncomfortable to your position, there is no reward (polls don't go up) but when you lie to make you sound better you are rewarded.  If you go back to the first paragraph of this post you can see what the consequences of this are, the electorate are training politicians to lie, as long as they do it in a forceful, confident manner.  Not only is the electorate training politicians to lie, but training them to be good liars.

There is a vast amount of despair about special interest groups and their money controlling government and there's more than a little to that.  But the reason that we have the government we have is that the electorate elects them.  It would seem to me a decent start to punish liars rather than reward them.  It is trivially easy in this day and age to find out who is lying.  There is an independent organization dedicated to this very task.  Why doesn't it seem to matter?

In a democracy you get the government you deserve.