Politics - What the??

Well, here I am talking politics, kind of. I can't believe I'm going to do it, so please go easy on me!

I see the political figures when coming up to an election appear to want to uncover skeletons in the closets of their rivals. I don't understand how or why this happens, or how they can get away with it. These people will be elected, and asked to run a country, and all they demonstrate before is how they can tell tales. Come on people, this isn't school, you know.

Is it really newsworthy, or make any sort of a difference if a politician tried drugs, or got drunk in the past, or had any sort of a life like the rest of us? Actually, I think it does. Those politicians would be more likely to be able to identify with normal people, wouldn't they?

Obviously, whilst in power the politician should not be drinking or taking drugs so that it has an effect on the decisions that they make. If the politicians have done it in the past, does it matter if they no longer do? Again, I actually think it does. A politician is more able to understand issues if they have some experience around what other people have seen or done, don't you think?

There seems to be a bit of a problem, raking up people's past leading up to an election seems a waste of energy. On the other hand, question a politicians' political past would be very useful. "Why did you do do that?", and "What did you learn" would surely be more important than whether that politician promises to do this that and the other. I mean, promises can often be empty, whereas if we know about the mistakes and therefore learnings of a politician we may better be able to judge where they're coming form, and what is really important to them, instead of being a case of just making the right noises.

Perhaps we should start to look at politicians in the same way as we do stocks in the stock market? There's the fundamentals, the financials returns of the past, whether the management has been truthful, and held the people they represent in high regard. does the returns on investment outweight the risk involved?
Can we do technical analysis on the politician, look at the trends and patterns of past performance? Be able to predict what they're likely to do in the future? It's worth a thought isn't it?
Perhaps then, when the politicians start to rake up all this so called important information, that would detract from their bottom line due to the wasted energy, and we'd eliminate the snitches!

It's novel, but do you think that we could set up a political stock market, and only then pick stocks based on performance rather than connections, empty promises and what they manage to uncover about the opposition? Kind of seems like a cool idea to me?