
Trust is vital in politics. That is not what you'd ordinarily think about politics.
The
most surprising thing I can say about politics is that trust is one of
the vital elements. For a politician, staffer or lobbyist to be
effective he must be trusted; his word must be good.
With all the prejudice against politics it may be hard to understand why this is true.
At
all times in politics you are dealing with a vast number of people, not
just fellow legislators, staffers and lobbyists but donors, supporters
and important people of all sorts. Politics is the art of creating
coalitions. Coalitions include friends, allies, opponents and
enemies. The only glue that can hold such a strange conglomerate
together is a common purpose and mutual trust.
When a politician gives his word to
another politician, lobbyist or staffer it must be good. It doesn't
matter whether the word is a threat, a promise, a commitment or a
rejection... everyone else will be operating on the assumption that the
statement is trustworthy.
So that leaves two obvious questions:
what happens to people who aren't trust worthy and how does trust
relate to campaign politics?

A person in politics who is not
trustworthy becomes a pariah in the political world. It may pain you
to hear this, but Bill Clinton was always known as untrustworthy and to
this day he is not trusted by anyone. Clinton had lied to or deceived
every member of Congress by the time his impeachment reached the
House. I was shocked that not one single Democrat stood up for him in
the House and no one used the dozen procedural options available to
derail the impeachment.
One of the most famous internal
Senate
letters in the past decade was from John McCain to junior Senator Obama
when Obama had broken a promise to McCain on a vote. McCain laid out
the core principle of the Senate: trust. I assume Obama listened. I
hope he did.
What about campaign statements? Campaign
statements are meaningless. Some politicians try to be honest in their
campaigns, many don't; many more try to make statements that are
ambiguous and can be read by multiple parties in selective ways.
Within
the political circles there is great tolerance for vague or outlandish
campaign statements. It doesn't impinge on the requirement for
interpersonal trust. Candidate Obama made many statements that
threatened important American treaties. Canada checked with his staff
to see if Obama was 'just talking campaign talk' and got reassurances
that he was.
That is how it works.
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