Vote For Me, I Don't Know What I'm Talking About.

Listening, as i normally do, to the Today program on Radio 4 this morning, i caught an item on Herman Cain, the prospective U.S Presidential candidate.

The item was about how Mr Cain had had difficulty talking about President Obama's recent policy on Libya, when asked by interviewers.
You can read about it and see a video here.
If you can't be bothered to wade through that, the main talking point was that Mr Cain had pretty obviously no idea what he was talking about.
He fumbled and fudged his way through the questions. He couldn't talk about any specifics concerning the questions he was asked. He even had to question the interviewers to make sure in his mind that they were talking about the same topic.

Here's a quote from when Mr Cain was asked if he supported President Obama's actions on Libya.
Cain: "President Obama supported the uprising? Correct? President Obama called for the removal of Gaddafi. Just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing before i say 'yes i agree', or 'no i don't agree'.
He then went on to say: "I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reasons - no, that's a different one"

It is obvious that this man, who don't forget wants to become the President and Commander In Chief of the most powerful country in the world, doesn't have a clue about a very important topic of recent U.S foreign policy.
I, for one, find this to be rather scary and also extremely worrying.
If you don't know about the important topics of recent foreign policy, what hope is there that you know anything about any of the smaller, but equally important, issues that affect your country and possibly the rest of the world?

This interview comes hot on the heals of another prospective U.S Presidential candidate, Rick Perry, not being able to name the three main agencies of the U.S Government in a televised debate.
See the video here.

All this is very funny to look at, especially from over here in the UK. But, as i said earlier, this is frightening stuff. In little over a years time, one of these men could be President of the USA!

It is, of course, quite possible that Cain and Perry may well have had their campaigns seriously damamged by these huge gaffes and quite rightly so. It's also quite probable that they will give up, if not now, then fairly soon.

But, this does beg the question, why did they think that they were qualified enough to run for President in the first place and also, why did people feel that they were good enough to do so and then support and give substantial amounts of money to them?

I realise that these two men might not be representative of all the candidates and i sure hope that there are better men still left in the race. But, it does make you wonder about the quality of political candidates and not just in the USA either. We see examples like this across the world.
Maybe, in the end, we get the candidates and politicians that we deserve?

The whole political system seems to be weighted heavily in favour of the well healed, well connected and well educated. It's almost a throwback to times past where only the Lords of the manor etc were allowed into Parliament/Government and the ordinary folk were kept out.

So, we end up getting political candidates who may have money and connections, but who have no real knowledge. Candidates like Herman Cain, who rely on advisors to tell them what to think and say. So much so, that when they're asked a question that they haven't been briefed on, they can't answer it.

Personally, i'd rather have a politician who knows their own mind, says what they really think and actually knows what they are talking about. Even if i don't happen to agree with what they say.

I'd vote for that.

AudioBoo - Remember, Remember....

Living history in the UK.

No Hiding Place

Today, in Britain, we had another one of those reminders that the the world & the nature of news has changed forever.
Although i can't pretend to know the full story, this is a basic synopsis of the story.

A Member of Parliament wanted to ask a question in the House of Commons. The question concerned the oil traders Trafigura and it's involvement with toxic waste in the Ivory Coast & a report about this involvement.
As is normal in these matters a national newspaper, The Guardian, planned to report this. But, then a law firm, Carter-Ruck, got an injunction preventing The Guardian from reporting the question. It was also prevented from naming the MP asking the question, what the question was & why the injunction had been granted in the first place.

This in itself seems to be against everything that Parliament stands for & against the freedom of speech. Usually procedings in Parliament are reported without any problems.

What, of course, Trafigura & Carter-Ruck had forgotten about & not bargained for, was the power of the Internet & especially the power of Twitter.

Word of what had happened soon got out & exploded onto Twitter. Both Trafigura & Carter-Ruck became top trending topics on Twitter & links & Tweets were flying around all over the Internet. I can vouch for this, as when i checked my Twitter feed first thing this morning, it was awash with Tweets about this subject. I wondered what was going on &, of course, followed some of the links. This is exactly what everyone else was doing. Especially as some of the Tweets were coming from some very popular Twitter users, like Stephen Fry.

If you didn't know about this issue before, you certainly knew about it after checking Twitter!
This had the complete opposite effect than what the lawyers & Trafigura wanted & expected. In fact, by suppressing the original story, they managed to create a completely new one.

Thankfully by early afternoon, the lawyers realised that the battle had been lost & the injunction was lifted. The story was then able to be reported quite legally. So, free specch won out in the end & hopefully, a big lesson has been learned by a lot of people.

In these days of world wide Internet access & social networking, nothing stays hidden for very long. In fact, the more you try to suppress a story, or incident, the more likely it is to explode in a way that could never have been imagined, even a few years ago.
Banning a story has the same effect as trying to ban a movie, or a piece of music. It just creates interest & provokes anger & angry people tell other people etc etc.

We have seen the power of Twitter, Facebook & social networking in general, when they have been the first to report news stories like the Hudson River plane crash & the death of Michael Jackson. We have also seen their effect when it came to reporting what was happening following the Iranian election.

The world has changed & maybe the power is starting to shift? Thankfully, in some ways anyway, the people in power seem to be the last to realise this.
Maybe they have been taught a valuable lesson today & one which they will need to learn from.

Power to the people?