{"id":1759,"date":"2009-09-28T11:33:54","date_gmt":"2009-09-28T18:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2016-09-06T07:00:33","modified_gmt":"2016-09-06T14:00:33","slug":"polishing-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2009\/polishing-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Polishing Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post has slowly been developing in my computer for a while. Polishing Politics<\/i> was the original title. Then I thought, “Politics needs far more than polishing!”<\/p>\n

So I thought to change the title to something along the lines of Reforming Politics<\/i> or Recreating Politics<\/i>. But that’s less poetic.<\/p>\n

Then upon a little additional thought, this one: “Perhaps polishing is the best we can hope for politics anyway.”<\/p>\n

I decided to leave the original title.<\/p>\n

I’m no politician (though I think I’d make an excellent one). Keep all of that in mind as you consider the advice I have to offer politicians and the political class. <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If you’ve called on someone else to resign for something, resign when you are guilty of that same thing or something similar.<\/li>\n
  2. Limit your years of elected political service to the number of years equaling one third your age at the time you were first elected.<\/li>\n
  3. Read any legislation in full before you vote for it. Otherwise, vote against it.<\/li>\n
  4. Give away your own money with a generosity directly proportionate to your generosity with public funds.<\/li>\n
  5. Relate to constituents, lobbyists, and fellow politicians from the depth of your own character, not on the level of their own moral or spiritual corruption.<\/li>\n
  6. Always put people before party.<\/li>\n
  7. Always put principle before people and party.<\/li>\n
  8. Remember you’re in office primarily because of divine appointment.<\/li>\n
  9. Know the Constitution with the commitment and practice of analyzing and interacting with all legislation and legislative activity within its framework.<\/li>\n
  10. If you can’t be a faithful, country-first representative of the people, get out.<\/li>\n
  11. Never lie or cover up or turn a blind eye for anyone or anything.<\/li>\n
  12. Keep in close touch with and be available to your constituents.<\/li>\n
  13. Say what you believe; believe what you say. Or be quiet.<\/li>\n
  14. Beware of power. Beware of money. Beware of politicians.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That list could go on and on. But I quit.<\/p>\n

    All those points sound less like adjusting a system and more like fixing those who use and engage the system.<\/p>\n

    It’s not politics that needs the polishing. It’s the politicians!<\/p>\n

    And that means we can go deeper than a mere surface polish.<\/p>\n

    Come to think of it, my points above speak to far deeper issues than those which are merely cosmetic. Or political.<\/p>\n

    Fix the heart…and the surface will shine!<\/p>\n

    And that applies equally well to those of us out of politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Fix the heart…and the surface will shine!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons-for-living","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-sn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}