Issue167 [Shining Sep 作文组] 8.31

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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: 548          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2006-9-2

To measure a political leader effective or not, there are many standards in the world nowadays. Achievement, moral, ethics and loyalty all can be important part of an effective leader. However, do they have the same importance to leaders? I do not think so. Hence, when the speaker asserts that complete honesty is not a useful virtue for a politician, I agree with this point.

To be an effective political leader, the most essential aspect is the achievement on his or her post. When people talk about political leaders in the history, the first thing emerge in the people's brain is what benefit or disaster these political leaders bring to people, but not other information, because political leader who is selected by public is to service public. For example, the former President of USA Bill Clinton is an impressive gentleman. He is famous for his sex scandal, but the reason that most people remember him is his significant achievement on economy fields. In his ruling, the economy of USA developed rapidly. The amount of unemployed reduced sharply, and the income of citizens increased year by year. Although he has some peccadillo in his private life, he is respected as an effective leader by American people.

To be an effective political leader, and to make significant achievement, sometimes, political leaders could not tell the truth to people all the time. As a political leader, one would face many different emergencies, to deal with problems in these situations, telling truth is not an good idea. For example, when the nation is attacked by terrorists, or a serious infectious diseases outbreak in some areas, leaders have the right to cover the truth to public at the first time. Because if political leaders tell people the truth before investigating the whole emergency, these negative information would cause people unnecessary panic, and even lead to some serious incidents. Therefore, to conceal the truth sometimes is not a bad choice, and to some extent, it is an necessary and good idea. Maybe, that is the so-called true lies.

However, honest is still a crucial virtue for a politician. People can understand and forgive the good lies, but no one could tolerance political leaders deceive the people's trust and use their power to do something improper. For instance, Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi use the untrue history schoolbooks to conceal the guilt that Japanese army committed to other nations in the world. Although his cheating behavior can let him get a lot of support from those citizens who do not know the fact, when people realize the true history, and reveal his lies, his reputation would be not as good as now, and people would not trust him again. It is easy to deceive Japanese people to a politician who can fool the whole world. How can he let people trust him and give him the power to rule the country? Hence, it maybe can bring some benefit to political leaders through lying, but to long-term effect, to be honest is the real advantaged choice.

In conclusion, to be an effective political leader, the most important aspect in people's mind is achievement. To tell some goodwill lies in some special situations is understandable. Moreover, to be excellent, politicians should keep honesty in some principle problems.