when do candidates tell the truth?

how naive is it of me to think that candidates for election should tell the truth and keep their promises? ok, very naive. then where does one draw the boundary with regard to how much spin we will accept? and how do we enforce such choices?

theoretically the third question is the easiest to answer, if you believe that voting can make a difference.

why am i going on about this just now? i found an article in the sunday times online about carl bernstein's new unauthorised 640-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

complete article here.

when i was about 11 bernstein was one of my heroes. we spent the summer of 1973 in the usa, and our friend bonnie who worked for the epa took us around dc. the first place we went was to a howard johnson's opposite an office building, and from our seat by the window bonnie pointed out the windows of the rooms where the watergate break-in had taken place. i got totally into politics for the first time in my life. *pause while i rummage in my room*

not a good pic but one of the buttons i bought at the time. o, and i also asked for the hardback "the final days" for my big chanukah present.

scroll forward 33 years. the sunday times anticipates bernstein's latest perspective:

"For years Bernstein suffered from writer’s block, but Knopf is promoting his biography as a triumphant return to form. Publisher Sonny Mehta said his portrait would “show us, for the first time, the true trajectory of Hillary Clinton’s life and career”. It will be published simultaneously in Britain by Hutchinson.

According to the publishers, it will cover everything from Clinton’s “complex relationship with her disciplinarian father” to “her courtship with Bill Clinton and the amazing dynamic of their marriage, during the most trying of circumstances”."

i think i feel sorry for hillary. i am, however, no longer sure for whom i wish to vote. it's like the game show 'the weakest link'. it often does not matter who the strongest link actually is. the people vote according to their perception, and for tactical reasons. how much spin will i accept?

before i had heard of richard nixon, i lived in a world where the president or the prime minister was a good man. we trusted him to lead our government honestly and to the best of his abilities. i also was taught to find a policeman if i was in trouble, and to make sure that i paid the bus conductor even if he forgot to ask me for a fare. that was obviously over the rainbow, yet i still hope for some of those attitudes to turn the tide today. *sigh*