RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Politics is politics. It isn't for the faint of heart. You have to be ready to defend yourself at any given time and be ready to hit back at will.

Both parties lie to the people. But just about everybody does. Think of other major institutions: the law, medicine, business--are any of those institutions completely free of charlatans? No, this is just part of the human condition. Now, politics does tend to attract its own fair share of delinquents, especially given that someone who's good at grandstanding can easily be elected to office. Democrats do not hold the moral edge over Republicans or vice versa. Both have their own fair share of corrupt politicians.

Now there are some very good people in politics, but its strange how a lot of them don't make it to the Presidency. Just off the top of my head, I can probably list about 6 or 7 out of 43 Presidents that really worked hard to change the country for the positive. Thats it! The majority of our elected Presidents have been mediocrities or worse! Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts and Eisenhower all top my list. Some presidents also made solid contributions but never got the credit that was due to them by historians and the popular media for various reasons. Polk, Taft, and Ford are examples of Presidents who worked hard but didn't have the showmanship skills necessary to win it all and keep it in politics. Anyone can be poser, now try to do the job. A lot of the time, the job overwhelms people who are not intellectually capable, yet ironically those are the same ones who win elections over and over again. The workhorse rarely gets far because they're busy doing their jobs as opposed to grandstanding. And that simply shouldn't be not just in politics, but in our lives and workplaces as well.

See,it is not that either side lies more.It is that both of 'em will disregard or ignore a tidbit that does not fit the worldview.For example much hoo-ha has been said that Bush lied to get us into the war against Saddam.Well,if he lied,so did everyone else that was privy to the same intelligence that he was privy to.Since that ain't the case,I do not believe that he LIED.What I do think is that even if he had a doubt,he WAS eager to get into the war.If the info was a little shady,his belief was not.He either honestly believed it or he wanted it to be the case and even if he was not sure,he was "itchy" for war.So if a dissenting view came up,he may have ignored it.Then again,other politicians/presidents are guilty of the same stuff(I think that FDR was guilty of wanting to get us into WW2,whether or not it was a needed war,which of course it was!)So more than lying,righties and lefties are guilty of ignoring inconvenient truths.