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Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
~~ Henry Kissinger ~~

I think Henry Kissinger is being very liberal - no pun intended! Probably a more accurate quote would be that that 99% of politicians give the other one percent a bad reputation. :-)

Why is it that so many politicians have such a bad reputation? Is it because they are inherently dishonest? I don’t think so. I think there is more to it than meets the eye. Politicians are just like other people - actually smarter than most of us as, afterall, they end up ruling over us!

We, as people, bear some responsibility for making the politicians behave the way they do. We willingly vote for those who make tall promises; the promises we know in our heart of hearts cannot possibly be kept. And we generally don’t vote for those politicians who try to stick to the facts and don’t make tall promises. Thus those politicians who try to stick to facts, being humans, quickly learn that to get elected they need to learn the ‘art’ of making tall promises. So we end up with the sort of policians we have.

Some people have tried to sue some politicians for breach of promises but courts take the view that politicians are not obligated to keep their election promises. May be we should try to force politicians to make promises under oath at election time and see if that will hold in court. Somehow I think that courts will still hold that politicians are not obligated to keep their election promises even if those promises were made under oath. :-)

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