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christophilus • today at 11:39 AM • 9 replies • view on HN

Maybe. Politics is a skill, and not everyone has a knack for it. It’s dirty, requires compromise, and a willingness to work with your opponents. Or, well, at least it used to.


Replies

palata • today at 12:18 PM

> Politics is a skill

It very much is, but I don't believe it is the skill of "solving problems" or "making society better".

Politics is about getting elected. Convincing the people that it's all the others' fault, that you know better, that you will save the world. And then when they get elected... we naively expect them to solve problems. But we selected them for their capacity at being selected, not their capacity at understanding the big problems society is facing...

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ykonstant • today at 11:44 AM

In some clusters, senior academics are exactly like that.

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t0bia_s • today at 2:10 PM

Competence of democratic politicians is to be liked and get most votes. Usually it means to be without values.

I hope more people will realize that voting for uknown politicians that offers empty promises for artificially made problems means givig up our responsibility and at the end, make things worse as we see in current democratic countries.

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Danox • today at 4:38 PM

In my lifetime, it has been a skill of procrastination. and milking the public…

enaaem • today at 1:44 PM

The “skill” of career politicians is mostly loyalty and appointing people based on loyalty is the worst criteria.

ryu2k2 • today at 11:56 AM

We'd be living in a better world if politics was a skill and our politicians were good at it.

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subscribed • today at 1:08 PM

I would assume PhD holding people are smart enough to understand their limitations and strengths.

They've been elected during a very special events. They know what's expected of them. Looks like compared to the previous powers this lot at least gives the country a fighting chance.

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dghughes • today at 1:00 PM

One could even say politics is also a science.

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g-b-r • today at 12:16 PM

I'm not sure if it used to be like that, but the skill required to politicians now is to get themselves elected, and that largely means the ability to lie well