As you all may know there is an General election taking place in Ireland. Lots of rhetoric, apologies for past mistakes, and plenty of promises for the future. There are also plenty of parties around to make such promises and I'm such there will be plenty of mistakes in the future.
What intrigues me the most is the unabashed, unashamed admission about how important image and spin is, how advertising giants like Sacchi and Sacchi can create a positive look for a party to the populous and turn policies into poetry.
There was and still is a time when politicians had to decide whether to use the traditional European model of getting their message across by using facts about taxes and the economy and reason to justify their positions so as to sway the voter towards their principles. More recently the American emotive model has been employed to move voters with stories of triumpt over poverty, rags to riches and how when they were little boys they wanted to change the world, while they wiped their eyes with tissues sponsored by Coca- Cola as they stared into the camera.
Personally, I have lost interest in both models of persuasion. Blatantly using tax payers money to employ stylists and spin merchants is an admission that all is literally not as it appears. Politicians must learn now that all people want is the truth. You have nothing to fear ever if you have the truth. And the truth can always be told in rags.
