Leading the horse to water

There are two articles that caught my attention in the first scan of the daily papers and both illustrate fully the gap between what the politicians think and the broader reality of what the electorate expects in the longer term.

But firstly I have been known to rail at the lack of leadership from the political classes and the lack of politicians with the strength and moral fibre to do the right thing, that is to lead from the front. In the two articles one might argue that I am being disingenuous and that these cases show two politicians in the very mold that I describe, the difference between these cases and a statesman like act is simple. Statesmen in the past, and one trusts the future, have acted from a deep seated set of moral and political beliefs not as in these cases from a desire to respond to the media driven day to day populist agenda.

Case 1; The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, no doubt driven on by Jonah Brown, wants to be seen as a strong leader, with a sound grasp and control of the countries finances, so he takes a strong and fierce stand against the countries Bankers being paid the bonuses that they have earned from their employers, but at the same time needs to get the country out of the recession it is mired in.

So what we need are funds for the private economy to try and get that moving and so increase the tax revenues, note that the tried and proven tax cuts are anathema to him, but he cannot loan any money because no one wants to loan any more to him. So he will now ask the banks to get creative and loan money to marginal companies but what ever you do do not reward those who get creative with bonuses. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/894a346a-e37e-11de-8d36-00144feab49a.html and to make it even better lets ask the foreign banks as well to be good citizens while we talk about taxing them to death. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/6754828/Pre-Budget-report-Foreign-banks-urged-to-lend-to-UK-businesses.htm.

Now some might say this is carrot and stick at its best but this chancellor does not have the intellect to try that.

Case 2

On the other side of the Atlantic we seem to have a President who genuinely hates his country. With the Indians saying they will not accept any binding resolutions from Copenhagen and the very science on which Global Cooling er no Global Warming er no Climate Change is based on being shown to be possible manipulated, this idiot gives himself the powers, through an unelected body, to give his countries economic advantages away.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6755201/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Barack-Obama-given-power-to-cut-greenhouse-gases.html

So as not to be left out our Jonah, who loves to spout numbers, goes even further and makes the usual total fool of himself http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6756467/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Gordon-Brown-wants-EU-to-cut-emissions-by-30pc.html