Politics and the General Public: Policy, Promises and the Unintelligible

Wow, am I about to make a non-partisan post? We'll see...

After watching CBCs "Your Turn 2008" campaign programme today, I think I understand the problem with government (Note: I said government, NOT politics) in North America, and especially in Canada. This may be an oversimplification of the sources of the problem, but bear with me.

It all starts with Voter Apathy.

Voters stop caring because they see all of the politics. That's all of the posturing, the partisan hackery and mockery. They see all of the broken promises made.
New voters dont start caring because they see the above. But more importantly, they do not understand the underlying principals behind the promises made (then broken).

Why are the promises made in the first place?
Because the political parties do not have policy that is easily interpreted by the general public. The possible reasons are many: the policy is too difficult to understand, the policy is deliberately convoluted, it might even be that the general public is too stupid to understand the policy. But the bottom line is this, that the political parties cannot let their policy documents stand on their own as living, breathing documents.

So the political parties make "policy decisions" which are expressed as (mostly) spending promises and tax cuts (or increases). The details of these expressions are based on the current realities, or the anticipated reality of the (hopefully) foreseeable future. But it's all fiction and conjecture really. And once you get into power (or opposition), the reality is usually different. So your policy gets expressed in terms of a different revenue stream or expenditure.

Ok... all that to just say this: Party policy is just too friggin complicated to understand. That's it.