issue167 同主题第三期 by寂寞樱花

寂寞樱花UID: 2306511

TOPIC: ISSUE167 - "It is impossible for an effective political leader to tell the truth all the time. Complete honesty is not a useful virtue for a politician."
WORDS: 576          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2007-8-12

1、政治是一个竞争场，如果政治领导在这样的竞争中完全坦诚，那么他就没有任何胜算可言，没有胜算也就谈不上政治了。
2、有一些信息是不能够完全向群众或人民透露的，否则国家就没有机密可言，而一旦国家没有机密就意味着敌人或者对手会完全的了解这个国家，这样这个国家的政权也就无法站住脚了。这是为了公众的安全着想。
3、但并不是说政治领导就可以保留所有的信息不让公众知道，一些正常的日常政治事务是有必要让公众了解的，只有民主的政权才能得到人们的支持。


In current time, debate on whether complete honesty is a good virtue or not for a politician becomes popular. Some people believe that complete honesty is important for an effective political leader, while the others trust that political leaders do not need to tell all truth to public sometimes. In my opinion, though honesty is a virtue political leaders should have, they can keep some information from the public for some special reasons sometimes.

Admittedly, a political leader should be honest, and honesty is a good virtue for all political leaders. However, politics is a kind of competition. If a political leader be honesty to everyone, the regime of him/her may be ruined fast, because his/her enemies or rivals will realize his/her shortcut well and we all know that each person may has some flaws, and if let the leader's rivals knows that, they may attack the leader in right places. So if a political leader want to keep his/her position and want to continue serving his/her people, he/she should not be complete honesty for public in order to increase his/her fame or to gain more trust form people.

Otherwise, political leaders should not be complete honesty because of the security of the country. Just imagine that if a political leader tells all truth to the public, how will the result of this country be? It is obviously that the enemies will know the country well and they may conquer this country in a right way. For example, if a political leader outlet the situation of weapons of his/her country, the rivals may ruin the whole country easily by destroying the garage of weapons firstly. And there also has been spy-war between countries and all of which cannot be told to public either. On the other hand, if a political leader tells the truth all the time, then some organization such as CIA does not be needed for there is no secret in the whole country. As a result, keep some information in secret is very important for a political leader for it is a way to protect the country from conquer of other countries.

Nevertheless, though keeping some information away from the public is useful or needed, the political leaders should not keep all of the information from the public all the time. Some information, such as the process of the development of the country or the way of the law goes, all these situation should be told honestly to the public, or the regime of the political leader will be ruined quickly as well. Apt example included the case of Watergate in America and the case of SARS in China. Both of these cases are caused by keep some inappropriate information from the public and both two cases lead to an extreme bad result. So from these two examples we could see that honesty is needed for a political leader, though sometimes he/she could keep some information from public for some special reason, in most time, he/she should tell the truth to the public or his/her regime may become ruined.

In sum, for an effective political leader, he/she should tell the truth to the public in most time for honesty is one of the virtues that a politician must have. However, it is impossible for a political leader to tell truth all the time, because some information must be keep from the public for the reason of security of the country or the people.