by Sezin Koehler

Created on: March 20, 2009

In theory, leaders should always be held to a higher standard, moral and otherwise. They should inspire us to be better people and they should be working to ensure that our rights are protected. This is why we elect them to make important decisions about our lives and futures. However, in the real world politics has taken on a corporate structure with many politicians' ultimate goal being to get ahead in his or her career, not necessarily to embody such lofty ideals. Of course, there are a small number of politicians who are fuelled by a desire to do good and improve lives, but they are a minority. In this sense, it is not that politicians need to be held to a higher moral standard, but they should be held to at least a basic moral standard of behaviour that meshes with their governmental role and platform.

The basic moral standard of any politician should be determined by his political platform. If a candidate preaches family values, then he indeed should called upon to uphold the family values he advocates for others. The same would go if a politician espouses hedonism or anarchy: his moral standard could only follow with his political platform and we could not expect him to uphold standards that are not a part of his political persona. As voters, we tend to support politicians with the same or similar moral standards as ourselves and we should expect them to at least uphold those very moral standards, if not go beyond them in their integrity.

However, politics has more and more become a theatre of posturings whereby politicians say what they think people want to hear in order to win elections and hold on to coveted government roles. This phenomenon makes any moral standards whatsoever almost moot points because it is just words followed by very little moral action. The huge number of politicians who run family values campaigns only to be caught red handed soliciting prostitutes, having affairs, being involved in pornography and other anti-family activities speaks to the vast gulf between the moral standards proposed by a politicians words and his or her actions. The question of whether politicians should be held to a higher standard takes on a different tone in cases like these because the politicians are not complying with even a basic moral standard of honesty and responsibility, not only with regards to their constituents, but also to their own families.

Once we have a majority of politicians who work with a basic moral standard of integrity, honesty and to better the lives of their constituents, only then can we begin to expect a higher moral standard from them.

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