Why is politics seem to be about calling names?

[JackBauer]

I know I sound like my mum but in the run up to the election why do the people who want to run the country descend into name-calling and snide remarks about each other like schoolboys running a popularity contest?
I mean this in all seriousness actually, why do we accept that they are going to slur each other and start smear campaigns?

This isn't how nomral people get jobs!

Good god, that thread title makes no bleeding sense at all, sorry!

Why does politics seem to be about namecalling?

You'r like to think that a smear campaign is counter-productive. Us Brits are a fair-minded lot and we don't like seeing people being picked on and bullied, as a rule.

However, if it wasn't effective they wouldn't do it. The phrase is 'mud sticks'.. closely followed by 'no smoke without fire'. Casually keep mentioning that - let's pick one - former Labour leader the late Michael Foot (incredible political intellect) was a bit scruffy and went to the cenotaph in a donkey jacket (inaccurate, as it happens) and what's the result? He not only loses the election but it pops up in his obit, poor guy

Mmm - my sister was commenting on this yesterday. She said 'at first, they were talking about policies, and what they would do differently, and it was quite interesting, and then they just went back to bickering and I lost interest.' She's probably a fairly normal voter, I suspect.

Chil, just because it works doens't mean it is okay though.
I mean, imagine you were hiring an MD for a large corporation and one of them came in and said 'Don't hire Bob, his wife is a minger and he looks like a twat'

grendel, that's exactly what I do, lose interest when they start with the snidey remarks etc, if I want to hear bickering I'll listen to my DD's1

It's not OK, of course it's not.... But then we're not consistent at all with our standards of behaviour and morality. We say one thing and do another all the time. People always say publicly how terrible it is that newspapers print salacious stories about public figures and how they are not interested but the sales go through the roof so they must be, in reality. (MDs actually are judged in part on what they look like and their family connections, funnily enough).

So even though we might say we find bickering a turn-off, and whilst it might be unedifying for the participants, we are influenced by it.

My point is though, yes, some people may be influenced by it and people want to read sleb gossip but shoudl we not expect people that want to run the country, and be our representative's for the world, to behanve with a bit more decorum?

I think there is a vast difference between public figures such as celebrities and politicians as well TBH, I don't expect them to be perfect citizens but I expect them not to act like petty little children.