Partisan politics

[flaja]

Originally Posted by DanaC

No, I cannot give specific examples; however, I can point to a number of areas in which the potential for litigation can have a negative effect. In the medical world, for example, many doctors are unwilling to take risks on behalf of their patients, for fear of litigation.

Medical malpractice is not the same thing as political debate on political issues. 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.

I can think of several politicians, off the top of my head, who would become overly careful in the Commons' debates if the risk of litigation were there.

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?

As a local politician I sometimes have to deal with planning matters. If I am to sit on a planning committee, I am legally obliged to enter that committee with an open mind. Because it is a quasi-judicial process, if I have at any time expressed an opinion on the application being heard, i must declare an interest and leave the room.

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?

No, I cannot predict the specifics, but I can tell you the effect on the individual of a fear of litigation: it makes one cautious. It can, if the risk of litigation is high, make one overly-cautious. I do not want my politicians to be overly cautious.

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. 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.

If you want politicians to treat each other with respect.....don't vote for thugs and morons.

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.

How many politicians do you know? The field is huge. In my country, and I suspect this applies to yours as well, the vast majority of politicians are not known beyond the borders of the area they represent.

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.

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.

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? And considering how restricted ballot access is for candidates that are neither Democrat, nor Republican, a large number of people who seek election to public office do get elected. The number of people who get elected to Congress is seldom much greater than the number of people who seek election to Congress. In most elections something like 98% of the incumbents in the House of Representatives get re-elected and many do so without any challenger in either the general or the primary election.

There are 646 Members of Parliament in Britain. Out of those there may be 150-200 who are well known to the general public (with most people able to name a handful of those).

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.

The ones who make it into the public eye are the ones who play the political game, succeed in progressing to the top, or vocally rebel. On the basis of their performance, people judge the integrity of the remaining several hundred who do not play the political game, succeed in progressing to the top, or vocally rebel. Some of those will be just as ruthless as the front benchers....but many won't. There are plenty of MPs who do what they do with a public service ethos and no grand ambitions beyond representing their constituents. There are plenty who treat it like an ordinary job: doing what they can to help individuals and groups, attending the debates and voting on important issues, contributing in a meaningful way to society as a part of their work. There are also those who resent the fact they haven't progressed further, treat their job as a vehicle and enjoy the status.

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. Seldom does a member of Congress who votes against his party’s leader get punished in any way. There is no rule or regulation that says you must do X to be a member of a particular party. The current Republican presidential nominee has made a career of opposing the Republican Party leadership on many issues. There are no back benchers in America. You need not toe a party’s line to be a successful politician over here.

They're just people. If you want to be represented by civil and pleasant people.....then vote for civil and pleasant people. Don't vote for the man you'd feel most comfortable sharing a pint with and then be horrified when he turns the floor into a pub brawl.

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.