POLITICAL REALITIES

We are taught by the media that politicians are clever, devoted people whom we should respect. However from time  these politicians often reveal themselves as complete idiots. The vice-president of the USA Dan Quale once portrayed his grasp of geo-politics when he declared "I would like to visit Latin America but I don't speak Latin". Michele Bachmann, the Republican presidential hopeful recently signed her agreement to the statement that a black child born into slavery "was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American born after the election of the USA's first African-American president." This ridiculous claim was made despite the fact that slaves in the USA were forbidden to marry and were often separated from their family when sold. "It is not the first time that Mrs. Bachmann has found herself at the centre of controversy over her historical interpretation. She was widely criticised for asserting that American Founding Fathers, the authors of the Constitution, had "worked tirelessly" to end slavery, when more than half were slave owners and all signed off on a document that counted slaves as only "three-fifths" of a person." (Times, 11 July) It would seem that Bachmann's political knowledge is on par with Quale's. RD