Unfortunately ethical people are not always competent and competent people are not always ethical. Ethical people are unlikely to follow a political career precisely because it requires them to compromise their ethics. Competent people are unlikely to follow a political career because they can usually do much better elsewhere. What do we have left? Victims of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome, mostly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

If we want competent politicians we will a) have to reward them a damn sight better and b) overlook their moral failings.

I don’t understand why politics is such an unethical arena. With two parties willing to jump on the tiniest perceived fault in each other, you would think that all pollies would be very well-behaved, wouldn’t you?

It should be a strongly self-enforcing setup – one party cannot help itself but to criticise any member of the other party who does the slightest thing deemed to be inappropriate and therefore should be extremely careful about keeping its own nose squeaky clean, in order to uphold the standard it sets for the other party and to avoid embarrassing criticisms from them.

Even if a lot of pollies do have Dunning-Kruger syndrome and are not the best people for the job – because the best people are sensible enough to stay right away from politics – this self-enforcement should still work.

Why doesn’t it work??

"…this self-enforcement should still work. Why doesn't it work??"

I just had a frightening thought.

What if it is working and the current politicians are as well-behaved as they are capable of?

Oow! I think you might have hit the nail on the head there, WmTrevor!

( :>|

private philosophy works its way out in public performance. The deceit, lying and cess pool of denying is no more obvious than our current Government. Private philosophy and lives have manifest itself in public policy. Adultery, blasphemy, stealing and loose living. NO character references for these guys unless from each other. One hopes the Libs might be slightly better. They certainly could not be worse.

I have a couple of questions.

Why haven't you written articles on the questionable ethics and morals of Beattie, Bligh, Rudd and Gillard

Why have you only written one article critical of John Howard's Liberal National Coalition and one article of Newman's two month old LNP government. Where are your articles critical of the decades of Labor State governments, the Rudd Labor government and the Gillard Labor Government?

You claim both sides are morally and ethically questionable but the bulk of Governments in this country over the past 20 years have been Labor, especially since 2006. Have they been so much bettor than Howard and Newman so as not to require articles to be written, by you, specifically critical of them?

Are you showing the usual academic leftie bias?