Why can’t politicians agree?

By David Suzuki - 22 months ago

Several times during the U.S. presidential debate, Barack Obama said “I agree” or “John is right” in response to his opponent. Republicans spun this to imply that McCain knows what he’s about while Obama is weak. One of the terrible parts of politics is that when a new party is elected, the new government acts as if virtually everything the old government did was stupid, wasteful, or too expensive, and proceeds to dismantle the existing programs and structures to replace them with its own until another election is held and the process begins all over again. Are there no issues on which all parties agree, programs that prove useful and should be continued?

Look at what happened when Stephen Harper’s government replaced Paul Martin’s. It is true that the Liberals talked about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but didn’t get at the big emitters. But when Harper got in, he immediately dismantled programs that were useful in reducing emissions only to create new ones that essentially did the same thing.

In the last election, Canadians indicated they did not want any party in the majority. Surely what that means is that the party that forms government has been given a mandate to co-operate with other parties as the electorate has indicated. A good place to start would be to recognize “He’s right” or “We agree” on many issues.

1 Comment

 

Post #1

Omar Caneo - 22 months ago

Elections have become a ruthless competitions between parties. I think this overwhelming competative environment that politicians create condition them to refuse any solutions proposed by other running candidates, even when those solutions meet their own agenda. 

It's unfortunate that the Republicans have to take something positive and turn it on it's axis to protray a message of weakness.

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