The Hopeful Politician

A short creative non-fiction story

We’re walking home, my wife and I, climbing a hill and only a block away, when the man steps out from around a van parked on the roadside.

Have you got a minute? he asks. It’s not a question as he does not wait before launching into a speech.

He smiles at us with perfectly straight teeth like a model in a stock photo. Like such a model he is white. His hair is dark and cut short on the sides, a slight curl at the tips. He is well put-together, and he speaks with confidence while saying nothing at all.

His request is for signatures, nothing more, he explains, so he can run for political office. He has made up his mind that what we concerned voters must be concerned with is transparency. This is his ‘hook’, declared as if it were the Holy Grail, the magic bullet, precisely what Every Citizen cares about the most.

My wife and I are new to this city and I’ve not had time to research politics in the area. I have no idea why he thinks transparency is that would concern me (the Republican President at this time is quite transparent, and it makes his actions and words no less abhorrent in my mind) but, I think, this is an opportunity to get informed, at least a little. I will ask questions! As soon as he makes space for me to do so, of course.

As he speaks, he waves a clipboard with signatures and names. He has a companion who reluctantly hands me an information pamphlet when I finally manage to get in a word edgewise and ask to know more about the party he represents. Reluctantly as there are only a few available, apparently. This seems poorly planned for a party that claims transparency and therefore advocates for an informed electorate.

The hopeful politician continues speaking as though he has already won me over and my signature is as good as got. I scan the pamphlet while he criticises his opposition, something that does little to prove to me he is truly any different from any other politician.

And what, I say, when he finally pauses, the clipboard held towards me in anticipation of my signature, is your stance on Reconciliation?

Reconciliation? He furrows his brow as if this word is entirely new to his vocabulary. Reconciliation for what?

I have no further questions at this point. His response tells me everything I want to know. He is well-meaning, perhaps, but not a candidate I would choose for political office. I’m sure he will be an excellent politician, making all the right promises to get elected and then unapologetically going back on them as he does all he can to keep the job. But still, even knowing I will not give him my signature, I offer him something, hoping that this conversation will maybe inspire him to ask questions and listen to people, rather than assuming he has every possible answer.

Like, Truth and Reconciliation. The systemic oppression of Indigenous groups, restitution for Residential school survivors—that Reconciliation, I explain.

He is taken off guard, so entirely expectant of a positive response to his platform of transparency he has not once considered a platform for equality.

He is less confident as he speaks of corrupt chiefs and how he has ‘a Native friend’.

Still, he is convinced of his qualifications for this job and that I must be too, somehow. He again extends the clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other.

That’s alright. I say to him. I’m not comfortable signing that until I’ve had a chance to look at your party website and do a little more research. I like to be an informed voter.

It’s a shame, I think, as I shake my head and take my wife’s hand and we walk away, that he has so many answers.

It’s not voting, though, it’s just so I can run, he calls after us, making him more transparent than ever.

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Originally published on Medium. Edited from original.