Do we place unreasonable expectations on our elected officials?

Do we place unreasonable expectations on our elected officials?

I'm going to cite a real-life example that I witnessed many years ago.

It was about 1992. I was living in California. I attended a "town hall meeting" put on by a state legislator. More out of curiosity in how these things ran, than anything else. Anyway, by the time I left I almost felt sorry for the guy. The place was packed and there were people getting up and yelling at the guy things like, "I sent you a letter 9 months ago about some small insignificant problem having to do with my irrigation and now you don't even remember it!". (I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but that's the gist of it.)

Just from a human standpoint, is it really reasonable to expect a person to remember, in detail, every single complaint and nuance?

Since then I have always tried to keep this in mind when evaluating politicians. What can a reasonable and competent person actually do? While I do expect them to be better than me, I don't expect Superman, either.

The current Herman Cain thing might be a good example.

Yes absolutely. Many expect the economy to be fixed in one term but the fact is, that can't happen.

Juiposa said:

Yes absolutely. Many expect the economy to be fixed in one term but the fact is, that can't happen.

Click to expand...

That's one thing.

But I think the moral expectations are just out of this world.

And often times when a candidate or an incumbent does something that we won't like, we have this massive outrage that can only be described as hypocritical.

Now there's a few technicalities in that last statement in terms of who is the actual hypocrites.

But the thing that we need to realise is that we're all broken, every single one of us and yet we pretend that we're not. We all lead lives of imperfection, and yet we cling to this fantasy that there's a perfect life and that our leaders should embody it. But if we expect our leaders to live on some higher moral plain then we do... well then we're just asking to be lied to.

problem is they raise the expectation level when they run with these silly promises. Look at Obama he ran under the banner "hope", I mean lets be honest he was never going to change anything