I mentioned recently that I attended a talk by our State Senator Ron Reagan, and that I found it inspiring and enlightening. I do understand that any politician's job is to get me to like him (not easy for a politician) and Mr Reagan is good at that . And I know that anytime someone talks straight, they may be abbreviating the facts, telling only one side, and summarising the issues conveniently so that their solution appears reasonable.
Despite all that, I admired Mr Reagan for saying about a given problem -- say, property taxes -- that, 1) here's what we should do in a perfect world, 2), here's why that's not politically feasible, and 3) here's what we are doing and why it's at least a step in the right direction. It left me feeling that this is a participatory process and that I owe it my input.
Contrast that with a presentation at our local Board of Realtors by a person who I will identify only as one of our congressional candidates. I'm not withholding his name to protect the innocent or the guilty, just to protect myself. Politics is a delicate subject, and one thing for sure: roughly half of the people out there feel as I do on a given subject, and half feel just the opposite. I don't think that making my politics a part of my real estate business is wise unless I'm okay with losing half of my clients! So I'll remain vague.
This presentation was supposed to have relevance to real estate and issues before the legislature affecting our industry. It turned out to be a campaign stop with a fair amount of partisan finger-pointing. For some reason, we had to discuss the candidate's support of a law making English the national language. This, in my opinion is one of those invented issues designed to deflect attention away from stuff that really matters. Cynthia says that the law is akin to making Catholicism the official religion of priests!
Aside from that, the candidate was smooth in avoiding any position that might offend his audience and was fluent in doublespeak. So what? Well, it had the opposite effect of our State Senator's talk, and left me feeling that my involvement in government is pointless and frustrating, and I had better leave it to professional BS artists to hash out. And that is a shame.
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