Surveyors

Pre-election telephone surveys interest me. You, too? Usually, they are party generated because that particular party wants, either to learn how you will vote, or to see if their promised platforms are on the right track to meet public approval. Having hung up on a few of these surveyors, I decided to go along with one, simply to find out what kinds of questions were being posed. The pollster didn't ask me, outright, what  my vote would be, but by skirting around, using clever tactics, he would, naturally, if I answered all of his questions, know my political leanings. At the same time, I was pondering his or at least for whom he worked. We continued. The questions were general at first : what are the most important issues to you, what do you think of the party in power, which party best reflects your thinking and so on. Later, honing in on specifics, there were these sorts of queries : which of the three leaders presented, do you see as PM, what coalitions would be the best combination, which of this selection of issues (named) is the most important to you. There were other questions concerning my personal life: whether I owned or not, my own home, how many children  I have or had, were they living at home, what was my income, what was my age. I never do answer these kinds of things, and informed the questioner who made no comment, who carried on with his list. What I found almost hilarious were inquiries such as: what would this or that new PM do about certain major issues. As I told the chap, how do I know what they would do when that party is not in power and the situation has not arisen? Do I rely on what they say they will do? Of course not. That would merely be guess work or hoping or wishing. That is why this long and tedious business of campaigning for weeks and weeks ahead of elections is such  waste of time. Am I the only one who sees that? What on earth good is standing up on a platform and speechifying about something that has not occurred and that, if it did occur, present conditions at the time would apply perhaps changing not only the situation at hand, but also the implications of any actions put to bear. It doesn't make sense to me. So, okay, you say, how does anyone become acquainted with the person who wants to be leader of the country? Certainly, we do need to introduce the candidates to the citizens. They can comment on current local, national and international events and how they see them. They can even speculate on possible solutions but to promise that they alone can make those solutions work is not credible. You can throw the switch to start the machine but you need to supply fuel for it to work. The fuel in this case is usually government controlled funding and the political oils to keep everything running smoothly, Therefore, it can only be tested in the doing, not the talking.