Politicians and Elections - Essay Example

The expectations of the electorate regarding personal conduct and characteristics of politicians, immensely impacts the decisions of voters on the people to choose during the election period (Thurber, 2004). The perceptions held by the electorate significantly affects the decision making process of the electorates. Within political scenarios, various challenges define the success of political campaign, including the presence of a crisis and the ability to handle the crisis amicably. These perceptions commonly occur in three dimensions of personals character, associated individuals and characteristics regarding the citizenship of the person.

During the campaign period, the politicians aim at convincing the electorate to change the negative perceptions held, regarding the politicians. The rhetoric method of self defense could be utilized in damage control of an individual’s political character, as well as personal character. Though the method could be identified as containing paranoia or arrogance, the utilization of the method by George Hansen enabled him to continually get re-elected into the United States congress. The character of this politician underwent serious scrutiny within the congress, and outside the congress.

During the campaigning period, Hansen continually employed the method of delivering rhetorical speeches as a way of seeking to convince the electorate about his questionable character. The issues arising within the political scenario, surrounding Hansen, centered on his personal behavior and professional conduct (Short, 1987). This included felony charges and accusations of providing false information regarding his wealth. While defending his political character during the election period, Hansen immensely utilized rhetoric speech to persuade the electorate otherwise, regarding his tainted political character.

Voters appear to consider the character competence of politicians over the proposed policies, and in turn increase the desire for politicians to present themselves as capable, regardless of their perceived public image. The crisis within politics appears to affect the electorate decisions adversely; hence the management of these issues remains fundamental to successful campaigning. Accusations of deceptive dealings between opposing candidates continue to present surmountable crisis within campaign teams.

The response offered to the public could be termed as a damage control measure for the candidates. While some candidates might choose to answer such image tainting crisis through the media, others speak directly to the electorate as a way of convincing them. Political analysis cannot define the better method of crisis control; however the candidates choose modalities which they deem fit for their campaign teams. Proper handling of political crisis stands between success and failure for any prospective political candidate in modern politics.

The challenges presented by political crisis could adversely affect the probability of candidates getting elected into prospective seats. In handling the political crisis that questioned his integrity, Hansen delivered speeches to the electorate. Concerning the prevalent issue of age, President Reagan failed to deliver any speech; however, he rhetorically joked about the issue and utterly ended the recurrent speculations regarding his age (Hahn, 1987). The methods utilized in handling political crisis depend heavily