Bundles and Bureaucrats
I spend a considerable part of my workday reading speeches by B- and C-list politicians: Foreign Ministers of former Soviet states, Agriculture Ministers of large industrialized countries, European Union Finance Ministers, and so on. These speeches are, for the most part, dull and predictable, and my job is to glean strategic and personal information from them to enable ass-kissing in upcoming bilaterals. So when the organization’s Overlord meets with the Greek Finance Minister, he can ease into a conversation about Greece misrepresenting the sorry state of their economy by chit-chatting about dogs, wives, or cycling. Apparently, I do a pretty good job: The Hungarian Prime Minister was so impressed with the Overlord’s small-talk that he commented “wow, you really read all of my speeches!” Little did Mr Bajnai know of the magic that can occur when you put a 23-year-old in a room with Google.
I know I’m a little late to realize this - or rather, realize the extent of this - but it worries me that these “world leaders” probably don’t know a damn thing about anything - that all of their so-called knowledge and expertise is the result of a bunch of people in offices feeding them ideas. When I see the collective effort put into one meeting, public appearance, or press release, I begin to think of these politicians not as individuals, but as a Humean “bundle” of external attributes. From Hume’s Treatise:
“Man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement”
Most of the time, we don’t think of the bundle as a bundle - we think of it as the “self”. Maintaining this image of “self” is arguably the most important part of a politician’s job: we don’t think of “Politician X” as “Politician X’s staff consisting of A, B, C, D, and a bunch of interns.” But what if these bundles begin to unravel, not just for the disillusioned 23-year-old researcher, but in public? What if, through a combination of mass media, personal blogs, transparency and word-of-mouth, the voting population is not just vaguely aware of, but struck in the face with the fragmented reality of the politician-bundle? Would a pure democracy elect not just the heads of state, but also individuals who are then hired to turn the head of state into the bundle he presents himself as - the speechwriter, personal assistants, brief-writers and researchers? Elected administrations are one big bundle of bundles of course, but I am curious about what a more a la carte government would look like - not a coalition government, but a ballot with deconstructed bundles and voters informed and engaged enough to think beyond checking just one party’s box. What would happen if we voted for every single significant person in a government? Would it make governments more accountable? Would it make us more responsible as voters?
