New Onion

“Only giants will hire giants. Ordinary men will hire men who are less than they are – and then those will go on to hire men who are less than they are – and then those will go on to hire men of even less stature until the whole organization is replete with pygmies.”

When I see 20 year old candidates, twentysomething Senators who live with their parents… it makes me go “hmm – how, exactly are they supposed to understand life?” (not to mention “how are they representing labour when they have never worked to support themselves?”) That quote by David Olgivy seems especially relevant… I don’t want to name them because in all likelihood I’ll be working with them for the next 50 years, but if there’s one big lesson from the failure of the PLP government to overcome all the baggage it’s that we need to ensure that character, integrity, honesty and competence become more the norm rather than than the exception in Bermuda politics.

The more top calibre people I get to work with the more I realize that I don’t know a damn thing, but if there’s one thing I know it’s that people in their 20s (including myself) probably lack the character development and experience to succeed in positions requiring them – like politics. There are no 30 year old Statesmen for a good reason.

I see this expressed in the internet debates on facebook where people don’t argue on there to get their point across, they do it for entertainment, or worse, to win. For anyone savvy about internet debates the normal flame warriors are becoming apparent with the usual quiver of logical fallacies and poor debating techniques. The risk is of course that if we’re not careful we’ll be developing bad habits in our real life political discussion (see the shouting down of Students Against Independence and Corruption by Progressive Minds), perhaps ultimately resulting to Godwin’s Law making a real life appearance in the House of Assembly somewhere around 2024.

It’s fine to ask young people to begin to step up, but it’s also necessary to offer mentoring, growth, and the lessons of wisdom from mistakes – which is why it’s very refreshing to hear some politicians stepping up and owning their mistakes and consequently sharing the lessons. That is at least one major reason why I won’t consider running in an election and also publish this blog generally anonymously – it’s going to be years before I can be sure that I have the integrity and experience necessary to be the most effective I can be in a world of conflicting opinions, different viewpoints, personality conflicts, and a generally shared long-term aim to do the best for Bermuda (with notable exceptions).

In addition, I see a terrible example being set for young people in terms of dirty politics, bad management, autocratic behaviour, arrogance, etc. Combine those in a private company with poor financial control and the results are predictable. We have every reason to suspect that the same is true in government.

I guess what it comes down to is this: How can we do better?