I'm not so sure. Seems like if you present such a selection to any nation with a sense of humor and a high degree of cultural cynicism about politics and politicians, this is what you'll get even in a period where the reigning class are (relativley) popular.
Yeah, I agree with LabRat; I would expect Don Key to win even if both Abbott and Rudd where very popular. Abbott's a big-state "conservative", Rudd's a incompetent socialist, and Brown is a nut-job. About the only politician I'm actually hoping wins is John Humphreys who's running for the Liberals in Griffith (meaning he'll be running against Rudd)*, who is an actual classicaly liberal (closer to libertarian than democrat), unlike most of the "Liberals". Also even though Abbott (Liberals) is the most popular, because of the second-preferences for the Greens (Brown) Labour (Rudd) will probably win the next election.
* Australian elections in a nutshell: The country is divided into around 200 electorates each with approximately 100,000 people. Each electorate elects one person to the House of Representatives, and which ever party (or coalition of parties) gets the most people in the House gets to choose the ministers, including the Prime Minister, from amoung the representatives and the senators. (The Senate gets 12 members from each state and four more from the two territories.) The people listed in the polls are the leaders of the three main parties, so they will probably become the Prime Minister if their party wins, but it's entirely possible for them to lose their local electorate, while their party actually wins.
In Finland, Mickey Mouse consistently garners a significant share of the votes in the presidential election. You'd think someone would be alarmed at this lack of interest in any of the candidates, but, as the article says, the voters have become numbed into accepting mediocrity.
I would be DELIGHTED if Australian politicians were mediocre - instead I find most of them to be actively evil.
The only ones NOT actively evil are those too stupid to recognise self interest.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
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JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/06/its-not-just-here.html (7 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
The überpost for this one could just be a reprint of Hayek's "Why the Worst Get on Top."
The Canadians, Americans and British have the same problem.
I think this is full of WIN. Mr. Don Key winning by almost 2:1 over his nearest competitor.
I'm not so sure. Seems like if you present such a selection to any nation with a sense of humor and a high degree of cultural cynicism about politics and politicians, this is what you'll get even in a period where the reigning class are (relativley) popular.
Yeah, I agree with LabRat; I would expect Don Key to win even if both Abbott and Rudd where very popular. Abbott's a big-state "conservative", Rudd's a incompetent socialist, and Brown is a nut-job. About the only politician I'm actually hoping wins is John Humphreys who's running for the Liberals in Griffith (meaning he'll be running against Rudd)*, who is an actual classicaly liberal (closer to libertarian than democrat), unlike most of the "Liberals". Also even though Abbott (Liberals) is the most popular, because of the second-preferences for the Greens (Brown) Labour (Rudd) will probably win the next election.
* Australian elections in a nutshell: The country is divided into around 200 electorates each with approximately 100,000 people. Each electorate elects one person to the House of Representatives, and which ever party (or coalition of parties) gets the most people in the House gets to choose the ministers, including the Prime Minister, from amoung the representatives and the senators. (The Senate gets 12 members from each state and four more from the two territories.) The people listed in the polls are the leaders of the three main parties, so they will probably become the Prime Minister if their party wins, but it's entirely possible for them to lose their local electorate, while their party actually wins.
In Finland, Mickey Mouse consistently garners a significant share of the votes in the presidential election. You'd think someone would be alarmed at this lack of interest in any of the candidates, but, as the article says, the voters have become numbed into accepting mediocrity.
I would be DELIGHTED if Australian politicians were mediocre - instead I find most of them to be actively evil.
The only ones NOT actively evil are those too stupid to recognise self interest.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>