Don't Believe What You Can't Get in Writing: Honesty in Government

For those of us following the debates and the 2008 presidential campaigns of the McCain/Palin Republican and the Obama/Biden Democratic tickets, we realize that politicians will say anything to get elected. In other words, "lying politician" is redundant. This has been true for every campaign for as long as most of us have been voting. Even if you are willing to concede that a neophyte running for office finds that things are different once actually sworn in, that doesn't change the fact that what they said they would do that caused us to vote for them is no longer valid.

For those of us who enlisted in the military at any point, we understand that recruiters lie. They have a job to do, some people say, but that is of little solace when you have an angry slab of meat with bad breath in your face at 4 a.m. demanding in a not-so-agreeable volume and tone to know why you aren't dressed exactly how he believes you should be dressed. Even if you are willing to overlook the general unpleasantness of those who the military has seen fit to place over you, it would pale in comparison to finding out that the career path that the recruiter's slick sales pitch "promised" you wasn't going to happen because none of it was in writing. It is a statement of fact that the military is not obligated to fulfill anything the recruiter said to you unless it was guaranteed in your enlistment contract.

Now, back to those politicians. What we should demand of the political parties before we vote for those individuals they parade before us in the popularity contests we call elections is that anything the political candidate promises us should be required to be in a legally-binding contract before we will cast a vote for him or her. If there is such a contract and the politician starts doing the opposite of his or her campaign "promises" once in office, we the people will have legal recourse to have them removed from office for breaching the contract.

Once upon a time, there was a Constitution that laid out impeachment options and there are even recall processes for local and state offices, but those depend on the Congress not being some of the same politicians whose job performance would not be in breach or having enough "sharp and aware" citizens to call them on their lies.

We certainly have enough lawyers in the United States (biggest ratio of lawyers to citizens per capita in the world) that we shouldn't find any problem finding a cadre of lawyers willing to prosecute breach of contract lawsuits. I would insert the requirement that each trial be televised or webcast, so that we the people can see the politician try and talk his or her way out of the charges, and that the politicians not be paid while in breach.