Ousted veterans fall victim to their own lousy show
The collapse of the core of the political system has also led to massive changes in the faces on the political stage. Many politicians who were very powerful just a couple of days ago, who featured regularly in the media, have seen their voters turn their backs on them to teach them a lesson.
Most will never relive the good old days and will have to become accustomed to the fact that they are now mere mortals. Some will have the maturity to move on, but most will continue to live in their imaginary little worlds, where they are still popular. They will play the role of victims of fate and dark conspiracies.
The main reason for their defeat was that they ignored the most fundamental rule of politics: providing a convincing narrative. They failed to deliver a narrative that would make for an interesting story and capture the attention of the weary and angry voter. They were defeated because they arrogantly ignored the needs of the audience to which they were playing. They failed to understand that the audience needs the right mix of politics and entertainment. They didn?t have the presence of mind to propose political solutions to the major issues concerning the electorate, nor did they have the flexibility to put on a good show. They had nothing interesting to say about the present and nothing at all to say about the future. Most, slaves to the political game that has been played out for decades, displayed little conviction, even for their own suggestions.
Hundreds of hours of television airtime and thousands of pages of analyses were not enlightening; they were boring. And, even worse, they created the impression that the same establishment that is responsible for all the problems that plague the country was planning to wriggle out of its responsibilities so it could continue the practices of the past.
Moreover, most of the candidates were hardly able to answer even simple questions such as why we should vote for them or what their goals and ambitions were. Their lack of vision and a plan undermined their credibility and they failed to win over voters who were prepared to listen.
Of course most of them had been in the game for such a long time that, had it been a proper job, they would have been pensioned off ages ago.
The tragedy is that it took the collapse of Greece and the threat of a disorderly default for the political arena to be cleared of a chunk of the people who were responsible for the mess. The fact that the political system could not renew itself without a disaster points to a serious structural deficiency.
