Home »
The Elected Official’s Guide
For better or worse, good or bad, tomato or tomah-to, politics is all optics.
You see what I mean?
Let me explain.
If it looks bad, it probably is. If it sounds dumb, it probably is. If it smells funny, your nose is working fine. And if it feels funny, it’s because your skin is crawling and stomach is churning, telling you that something looks bad, sounds dumb and smells funny.
If this confuses you and you are currently running for office in any of the upcoming municipal elections, I’d like to introduce you to ‘Kootenay Bob’s Comprehensive Council/Board Crap You Need to Know Unless You Want to Suffer Through Your Elected Term Like an Average Intellectual Attending a Flat World Theory Support Group session (KBCCBCYNKUYWSTYETLAIAFWTSG).
Your first lesson: get to know your acronyms and deal with it. They won’t go away. Acronyms are like Charlie Sheen. They’re hip at first but quickly become nothing more than bland clichés stolen from another time by an imagination-less snot. And they’re like traffic in Vancouver or Calgary – constant and apparently never-ending.
Before we proceed, please let me explain to you why I feel qualified to present to you civically-minded souls this ‘Elected Officials’ Guide.’
These ‘suggestions’ have come from two decades of being immersed in East Kootenay politics, and from the booze I’ve been drinking.
Are you ready? Here we go.
Elected Officials Guide Rule #1: NEVER admit you don’t know what you are talking about.
Breaching this rule is grounds for an endless hissing tirade of ‘tsks’ and sighs from those who know better than you, which is everyone. C’mon, you’re an elected official, that means YOU HAVE TO BE completely dim, doesn’t it? Well, at any rate, the guys at the coffee shops tell me so. And at the bars, but it takes them longer and there would be too many “fargsnargles” to edit out.
Also, the tire shop, barber, hockey rink, Rhinoplasty R Us shop and other locations. It’s everywhere and it’s unanimous from the unobserved public; you’re all morons.
So for crying out loud, don’t admit you don’t know something. Nod knowingly, perhaps offer a Brian- Mulroney-like-after-fleecing-the-Province-of-Manitoba-smile and say, “I see” or “I hear you.”
Never let the weak, or the strong, see that you are weak. I think Confucius said that. Or maybe it was Don Cherry.
Rule #2: YOU don’t stand a chance. You’re now a public monkey who we WILL demand dances from, whether they be at chamber of commerce meetings, annual events, ribbon cuttings or the hundreds of meetings you will be attending over the next three years. Related to that is the fact that you are now stuck to your local media. I personally hope you smell good, especially if you want to be a bad councillor or mayor. And quit your smirking public/civil servants, that statement includes you, too.
Hands up! Who would like to see ‘public relations’ removed from ‘community relations?’ Sorry, digression is an affliction with me.
Rule #3: DEAL with the random and insane afflictions of your local media. They are many, they are grisly and they are flat out sickening. But as any former hockey player/colour analyst with an IQ lower than 90 would say, “it is what it is.”
Now heed, because this is gold for elected officials… pure bloody gold mined from 20 years of scraping knuckle to the bone for a bevy of ingrates… Rule #4: DO NOT piss the media off. None of them. Some of them are smart and they’ll make you look bad and some are amazingly dumb and they’ll make you look smart but no matter, you are still going to look bad because you’ve either been misquoted or under-quoted and at the end of the day, you are at the whims of mostly fresh-from-school kids looking to make a mark. Some of them DO NOT care a lick about you and your blah-de-blah-blah in your community and how you saved Lassie from the poker and whiskey deprivations of the Loch Ness Monster. They just want a juicy quote that will get some minor mention in a national newspaper that will never hire them because they work for a corporation that is responsible for unleashing a plague of grammatically retarded rabbits on the masses, which it turns out are much smarter than their J school teachers taught.
Rule #5: STICK to your guns. Don’t be a goofy flip-flopping lightweight. Find your centre balance and let it be your piston. As soon as you release the anchor that is ‘you’ – you are lost. And you are of no use to your community at that point. In fact, in some countries, politicians who become rubbery knobs are turned into the subjects of massive hilarious ridicule. Such politicians give people like me endless options for headlines and wacky leads.
Rule #6: DO NOT chew gum when scuba diving. That’s just frigging stupid. And yes, there is a metaphor there.
Rule #7: ALWAYS remember – you support the two Es – the environment AND the economy. To be blasé on one or the other means you don’t REALLY want to get elected and are just serving as a dupe or foil to suck votes from one candidate or another. And by all the greatness that once existed in Robert’s Rules (his not mine), there was a time when one would be caned for such tactics. Or sometimes knighted.
Rule #8: IF you MUST drink with journalists, DO NOT let them pick up the TAB. It is expected that you SHOULD pay for ALL drinks and STILL suffer for blurting on and on about how you once organized a Communist Party kegger or escaped CHARGES for attempted buggery on a police car, if we can remember such juicy tidbits and DAMN YOU Energizer Bunny for failing me once again.
Rule #9: ALWAYS follow your heart. Follow the you who was before you were elected, but allow yourself to grow because you are going to learn more than you thought you would. It isn’t easy being an elected official. Compromise and process are now the yipping dogs at your feet, the like you think will nip your child on the nose or chin and you want to stomp it with your hiking boot. But you can’t because the SPCA will flay you alive. Such restrictions! Get used to it.
Rule #10: This is the big one. If you remember this rule, your time in politics should be relatively painless. It will NEVER be completely painless. Forget about those optimistic thoughts. You’re dog food now kids. Fodder for the chewing. Chum for the flicking to the uber-smart-know-it-all-pricks-who-don’t-have-the-courage-to-run-for-office who always know better than anyone else (except their wives when pressed by said wives), or me.
Deal with it or bugger off. Beat it if you can’t handle the heat. YOU chose this.
Politics is all about optics. If it looks like the heat is getting to you, it’s because it’s too hot in your world.
Welcome to the world of local politics, where the life you once lived has been bowled over by a rampaging hippo with verbal spewage akin to it having irritable bowel syndrome and a fatuously inflated sense of superiority, despite sweeping apathy and bouts of barking ignorance. It just doesn’t matter.
Dance for us monkey. Dance dance dance!
And damn you if you make a mistake or say something that makes you appear human or fallible. Gosh!
Abide by these 10 rules which are more like 15 or so because I do go on at times, and you will BARELY survive your time on council or the regional district or school board.
To all who are running for council or a board in this upcoming Nov. 19 election, I salute you for your courage and conviction. It is not easy what you are doing and it is worthy of your fellow citizens’ respect. You have all by now likely come across detractors and opponents to your position(s).
Keep it civil. Keep it real. And keep it moving forward.
Because there is NO going back, which is YOUR bonus SECRET Rule #11.
There are many other rules but I am afraid you have to pay me large ‘consultant-like’ bucks for me to divulge them.
Just remember. Politics is optics and once the peepers have peeped, the sights have been seen. You know what I mean?
Ian Cobb/e-KNOW
