In the day to day politicial competition that is ongoing in democracies, an essential aim is to retain some form of control over the national agenda. In this, a governing party starts with an advantage since the decisions it takes are sure to attract the greatest attention. It can however lose such advantage or see it blocked if government decisions being taken or shirked give rise to discontent across strata of the population.

In setting the agenda, the means of communciation being deployed serve as crucial tools. Newspapers and print media were a major feature of this process in modern times. Today, social media are widely used by government and opposition parties to transmit their political messages. Still it is curious how television... which historically developed after the print media and before social media came on stream... is still today considered as the most important tool by which to condition the national agenda.  At least that is what many political leaders in the US and Europe  still believe.

As it happens, the predominance of TV in this matter began round about when Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy held their TV debate in the 1960 US presidential campaign. That's almost seventy years ago...!

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MIDTERMS

The coming elections next month to the US House of Representatives and the Senate are generating ever increasing interest in that country and beyond.  At both institutions, the number of seats that are up for grabs means that according to how they swing, President Trump's Republican Party could lose the majority it presently enjoys in them The outcome will determine how the President could be carryng out the second half of his mandate.

During these last two years, given the Republican majority in both the House and the Senate, Trump successfully launched initiatives to acquire executive powers for which there are no precedents in the modern history of his country. At the same time, he also managed  (according to opinion polls) to lose a big chunk of the popularity that he started off with. The probabilty - so we're told - is that he will lose control of the legislative branch. Personally, I'll remain sceptical about this till I see it happen. For meanwhile, the Democratic Party does not seem to have a truly coherent message.

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RIGOUR

Someone asked me: Isn't it a sign of rigour that before a major investment programme is launched, those who will be responsible for it make sure that a detailed study is carried out of all it involves? - like the funding it needs, the time it will take to be done, the income or benefits that are to be expected from its operations, plus an estimate of its environmental and social impacts...

Of course such a study is always necessary. And it needs to be done rigorously by making sure that the latest scientific methods are brought into play. Still, the expectation should also be that no hidden intentions get involved in the preparation of the study. Among these for instance, could be the calculation prior to the study's start, that it should lead to a preset decision; or that the study could help to let some time pass before the project is abandoned; or for the impression to be given for a limited period that the project will be done, when in reality, it won't be...