Political Truths and Behavioural Economics

Wright said it would be “politically indefensible” to promise to keep the affair secret from the RCMP, which, to listen to some in Ottawa, makes him a saint. And perhaps that is all it takes to make a man look like a saint in the swamp of Canadian politics, where manipulation and back-scratching seem the easiest ways to rise.

Nigel Wright has a reputation as a stand-up guy; folk on all sides of the partisan divide have said so. He is, the subtext almost seems to be, one of them.

For most Canadians, politicians are a species apart, governed by different ethics shaped by political truths, which is to say they lean where favour directs them.  In this perspective, politicians are surely not like us, in much the way terrorists are not like us.

Thing is, there's only one species of human out there; we are all a lot more similar than we tend to consider.

If it's not that they are different, though, what gives?  

It's a sociological question with a behavioural economics answer.

The trick to uncovering that answer is one both Harper and Wright should be familiar with - recognizing oneself as being imperfect and equal to others.