[DanaC]

It sounds like a computer could be programmed to do your job. If you cannot venture an opinion based on your judgment, what purpose do you serve?

I can and do venture opinions in my job. I was referring purely to occasions when I have to sit on a quasi-judicial planning committee. Once inside that meeting any member can express an opinion. Prior to the meeting, a member must not reach a conclusion nor be seen to do so. This kind of committee is a very small part of my job.

Furthermore, in the U.S. whenever a doctor wants to prescribe, or even just give the patient the option of having, a treatment that is not 100% foolproof, the patient must sign a waiver whereby the doctor cannot be held liable in a malpractice suite.

And if the patient is unconscious? If the next of kin cannot be located? If a decision has to be made fast, if the risk has to be weighed up and a decision reached in time to stand a chance of saving the patient? Are you saying you can see no hypothetical situation that might lead a doctor to make his decision based on the risk litigation?

Which means that they now go out of their way to be insulting to their opponents rather than trying to find solutions to the political issues that they should be dealing with?

Well, okay, so you successfully legislate to ensure that your politicans can be sued for libel if they are personally insulted. Have you considered the various possible ramifications of that legislation? Have you considered the opportunities to take the political fight and have it out in lengthy court cases with frivolous actions brought at sensitive times (such as six months before an election)? Yes, it may make people more cautious about insulting someone, but it also may make people less willing to take a risk in attempting to expose someone. It won't only be those you seek to curb who feel themselves curtailed.

I don’t have anything to fear from a cautious politician as long as he is a conscientious politician who puts the public interest ahead of his personal or political interests.

Except, as you have already pointed out you believe most of your politicans do not put the public good ahead of their personal or political differences. Do you think a rule that allows litigation for libel is going to transform your politicians? Return to them, somehow, their moral compass?

If you want to think up legislation, you need to take account of where people are. If you base it on where you would prefer people to be, you may find it has some unintended consequences.

I don’t. But since it is one voter, one vote, one office holder with one seat in America, there is no way for me to prevent others from voting for thugs and morons. And in America as long as a politician can send government pork back home, most voters are content with their elected thugs and morons.

Democracy is a blunt instrument. See what happens when you trust the proles to vote?

If you mean personally, I know no politician. But because the news media is so vast in this country and politicians tend to spend entire lifetimes in office, it is easy to know many American politicians by reputation.

Many. I suspect not most. Manyh of our politicians also have lifelong careers. We also have our elder statesmen and our revered and famed rebels. The point remains, you are basing your judgement of a very large number of people on the media coverage of a minority of them.

Also remember that constituencies on a national level in the U.S. are much more vast here than in the U.K. A presidential election can easily have 100,000,000 votes and a member of the House of Representatives, on average, has about 600,000 people living in his district.

I don't see how that in any way counters the point I was making. In fact it seems to have little relevance to what we were discussing.

The number of politicians who make it into the public eye in any meaningful way is small compared to the number who do not.

Can someone who never makes it to elected or appointed office be called a politician?

I guess that would depend on your definition of politician. I was using the term to mean those who have been elected to serve in public office. The vast majority of elected politicians in my country are not well known. Those that are in the public eye, are the ones who have either succeeded to the front benches or are well-known rebels.

Something like half of the voting age population in the U.S. is not registered to vote and a good turnout for an election is 50% of the people that are registered. Most Americans don’t care about politics, so most don’t know anything about any politicians. But most Americans that do make a point of voting on a regular basis would likely at least know the name of the President, Vice-President, a few cabinet members and Supreme Court judges as well as the name of their Senators and Representative along with the party leaders in Congress.

I think you just made my point for me.

Since America doesn’t have a parliamentary system and our party structure isn’t comparable to Britain’s, the politicians that most often get noticed are the mavericks that go out of their way to oppose their own party.

Here also, the most admired and well-known politicians are often those who have rebelled against their party or crossed the floor.

We do not readily have this option in America since it is so hard for 3rd party and no-party candidates to get their name on the ballot. In the state of Florida you cannot even cast a write-in vote for someone that the state (controlled by the Democrats and Republicans) doesn’t recognize as a candidate.

That's unfortunate; however, the republican and democratic parties encompass a hell of a lot of people there is no reason to say their representatives cannot be pleasant and polite. There is equally no reason to think that members of smaller parties will not be bullish and unpleasant.

I don’t want my politicians to spend their time throwing bombs at each other either when the public interest is at stake. If they have to have the fear of litigation to make them stop with the bombs, so be it.

It wouldn't stop the bombs it would merely change the nature of the munitions. Politicians would still throw bombs but they would consist of libel cases.