Why Canadian Politics is Off the Rails

"Many critics have complained that I don't have a transit map like other candidates.  That's because it's not a politician's job to draw transit routes on a map; we pay professional planners and transit engineers to do that for us," he stated in the platform.

We pay professionals to do the job that is their profession.

So, what's the job of a politician?

Nobody knows.  Few people agree.  Most politicians have no idea - they're often not even able to articulate why they felt they should be politicians in the first place.

Yet what pols and their teams think people want is an omniscient leader who knows every issue, can solve every problem on their own.

They're not wrong on that.  I've seen Premiers quizzed about the minutiae of potholes and expected to have a thoughtful but bullet-point short answer.

We don't know what we want from our politicians, except everything.  Yet how many people know which level of government is responsible for what?

Society is not doing it's part in learning how the system works.  We're hiring people based on street theatre and tearing them up when they let us down.

So, they close the doors to their actions and amp up the rhetoric.  We become more disengaged, tune out, and then grumble while our democracy errodes.

David Soknacki is a smart man.  If we wanted a policy-wonk in chief, he was undoubtedly they best choice.  

The reason his support never rose to make him a viable contender was because he's not a natural salesman - he focused on the steak, not the sizzle.  

That he's fared so poorly in the race, yet everyone wants his ideas now that they're up for grabs is telling.

Politics isn't about competence, or skill, or even leadership - it's a popularity contest.

Rational actors, indeed.