Sur un Retour au Commencement Jusqu'a le Fin.
Politics is a strange sport - and make no mistake, although the stakes may be higher than a name on a trophy, it is nevertheless a sport. As with any sport, there are different positions to be played, from the stars to the roleplayers, from the candidate to the handler to the grunt volunteers.
I've been in politics for a long while, nearly half my life, and I've played most of the roles. I've started as a teenaged kid delivering flyers and licking stamps, I've ran campaigns, I've lobbied voters; I've even been a candidate once long ago. It's often easy to forget about some of the more fundamental roles.
A fortnight ago, I started all over; a fortnight ago, I began stuffing envelopes for Francois Bayrou and the UDF. It's French Presidential Election time!
Stuffing envelopes (and more recently, folding flyers) has been an eye-opener. Conversations with the other (mostly senior-citizen) volunteers has certainly helped me get an idea of the French polity; issues are looked at rather differently here - the system works radically differently too.
More to come.
I've been in politics for a long while, nearly half my life, and I've played most of the roles. I've started as a teenaged kid delivering flyers and licking stamps, I've ran campaigns, I've lobbied voters; I've even been a candidate once long ago. It's often easy to forget about some of the more fundamental roles.
A fortnight ago, I started all over; a fortnight ago, I began stuffing envelopes for Francois Bayrou and the UDF. It's French Presidential Election time!
Stuffing envelopes (and more recently, folding flyers) has been an eye-opener. Conversations with the other (mostly senior-citizen) volunteers has certainly helped me get an idea of the French polity; issues are looked at rather differently here - the system works radically differently too.
More to come.