These two activities are becoming incompatible. Politics is becoming a multimedia rich arm of the entertainment industry with success going to politicians who excel at that mass media frenzied fracas. We vote for media savvy people. Government on the other hand is a serious matter requiring a different skill set characterized by the ability to see and analyse problems and their possible solutions together wit a capacity to focus firmly on the task in hand and make substantial effort to get a useful result. While there may occasionally appear an individual who excels in both domains that is extremely unlikely. If we are to have good government we need to resolve this issue. Politics as a popular form of entertainment can continue happily away from such mundane concerns as truth reality or practicality as at present but to preserve us from these follies we need a new model of government involving well educated and trained individuals with talent directly relevant to the task in hand.
This unfortunate dichotomy has always been present but with modern media it is overwhelming and is now as serious a concern as the similar disjunction between religion with its rituals and supernatural beliefs which are of no significance to most of us and the practical issues of morality which directly affect us all.
