Monday, October 15, 2012

Historical Policy Making


The reading on historians as policy makers got me thinking about the general state of the nation.  Fact checking of politicians is on the rise, and has become one of the buzzwords of this election debate cycle.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could watch a presidential debate and not hear the announcers tell us that we have to wait on the fact checkers to dig into the script?  What if we didn’t have to be concerned that a candidate will follow through with their statements?  We are lied to about personal records and campaign promises and we are deceived about the real outcomes of past policies.  I think that a biggest question here is why we are all OK with it.  Personally, I see this as an outcome of Wallace’s point about us being historicidal, why else would we allow the lessons of history to not apply to our politicians?  It seems to me that with all the finger pointing and mud slinging and accusations of lies, from both sides, that continues, and expands, every four years there could be no time like the present to start a movement of historian policy makers.  What would it take to make this change, obviously it would require more than just a bunch of historians running for office, but what do we think that might be.

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