Terry Prone: As election looms, the real experts to seek out are the canvassers
There's an impression that advisers and communication experts are the people to whom everybody should listen — but this is not the case
Originally published in the Irish Examiner.
Let’s confess, first of all, to a grievous moral sin. It is a sin committed not just by me but by a rake of people who comment on politics.
The occasion of sin is the election. By-election, local election, Seanad election, general election or presidential election. Most of all, perhaps, a presidential election gives rise to this offence.
Which takes the form of being on such an adrenalin high from talking to TV, radio, and podcast hosts about the progress of the contest, that one forgets the people involved are — well — people.
Humans, in other words, who go out into their locality, knock on doors filled with the hope and belief that their neighbours will register their wonderful potential as public representatives.
Humans, some of whom, as they hit the middle of the electoral cycle, get that asexual dragging period pain, that gut acknowledgement that their chances are slipping, an inchoate something has changed, and changed for the worse.
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