Politics is about power, not about good policy. Good policy is what occasionally gets made when, in rare moments of clarity, altruism and understanding, politicians make good decisions. They are severely limited by what has already been tried, what happened before and what people believe. The time frame is long, and it almost always takes a long time for the principles of good policy to be accepted and then implemented.

Deficits are a perfect example of that. It took at least 10 years of discussion for our polity to accept the need for balanced finances. It took 20 years for universal medical care to be legislated at the federal level from when it was first introduced in Saskatchewan. In all cases, it takes leadership to implement good policy and then to survive the next election. Economists and opinion formers knew that reducing GST was bad, people not so much. GST was not well accepted when Mulroney introduced it, and was arguably never completely accepted by people because the case was never made for it convincingly. And in the next election, Mulroney's party was reduced to two seats.

I wish I could find the citation for a study I have seen which shows that voters believe that politicians have the same views as they do if they like the politicians in question, irrespective of the fact that from any rational perspective, there are huge and irreconcilable differences in views. People don't vote on the basis of policy, they vote on the basis of leadership.

It's too bad, because it was very good policy, particularly in tandem with free trade with the Yankees, and has done us a lot of good. Mulroney deserves at least that much credit. But taxes are always hard to sell, they're the Buckley's Mixture of policy.

Another example: crime. It's the crack cocaine issue for politicians. They just can't resist the "tough on crime" stuff, because polling tends to show that it's almost always popular. This is one of the main reasons I bailed from the world of organized, partisan politics. I found that the seasoned pros I dealt with were so cynical when it came to this. Whenever we discussed the issues, the pros always went on and on about crime. If you want to win, talk about crime — even though it's actually falling. People think it isn't. So convince them that it truly is out of control, scare the hell out of them, and promise that you'll throw everyone accused of a crime in jail for life and throw away the key. Unbelievably cynical, but you talk to the pros and they'll tell you, it works.

Well, I think it's observably true that a lot of good people who go into it get turned off by it. And that a lot of other good people don't even go near it in the first place.

I'm always amazed at the ones who survive for a reasonable amount of time and manage to maintain a reasonable amount of integrity — John Manley comes to mind. But note that he did not win the leadership . . .

I understand why you might be depressed about what you perceive to be cynicism, but you're wrong to be so. Our pluralistic political system is based on the idea that political parties compete for power. That means they have to be responsive to public opinion. In Canada, it means brokerage parties. They compete to put together winning electoral coalitions. They work hard to get support, and they try to make people happy, however those people define their happiness.

Consider an alternative political universe which is 'rational', that is to say, based purely on ideas. That would naturally lead to ideology. Ideology leads to dogma, dogma to dictatorship, and it's not very far along this historical progression before you outlaw all those you disagree with and physically eliminate them. There are lots of historical examples of this.

So, you see, our political system may be based on cynicism, but it's peaceful, and, for the most part, leads to increasing improvements to our lives. Even Stephen Harper abandoned his ideology to govern. That is a sign of political maturity, not weakness. It is certainly no reason for despair, unless, of course, you're Andrew Coyne.

Not at all. You should engage and do what you can to make things better. We live in an imperfect world, but that doesn't mean we should stop fighting to make it a better place. The vast majority of politicians and people involved in politics actually believe that, despite our negative image of them and despite all the cynicism.

The lag time for the structural deficit to kick in was due to the phasing in of increased program spending.

It has everything to do with it. There are two sides to the equation : income and spending. The GST cuts took place when announced, the increased program spending was phased in. A structural deficit is what happens when the government can never get out of the red fiscally. Both contributed. If you like, we can agree that irresponsible program spending by the Harper Conservative government was responsible for the structural deficit.