Thanks for the great words.

I've been thinking about your "1" essay. My five-year old son has been watching a lot of Number Block videos, a very clever program to teach kids math. This program treats 1, 10, 100, 1000, etc differently than all the other numbers. Maybe there is something mystical about the 1's.

If you haven't watch "The Death of Stalin" yet, you should. Utter political chaos on death of Jozef Stalin. Very funny but probably too truthful as the 3-4 Stalin lackeys were plotting over each other to take their own control of the country. Lots of trumping of political correctness to force a competitor into a weaker position.

You may be correct that ridgeline politics being less dominating the more political parties a nation has.

One skill I would like to see in a politician is how they really participate in a decision-making meeting. I want people in governance who are good listeners, can see multiple perspectives, behave civilly, change their minds when new facts and perspectives become known and succumb to the majority vote after sufficient discussion.

Unfortunately most voters do not have this kind of experience with any of the names on the ballots. This skill cannot be demonstrated on the campaign trail. So they are basing their vote on something else.

I can attest that even most Canadian party members do not know the party candidates in this way either. They are almost as blind as the general voters.

Maybe the party members of the PR systems have better knowledge of the "meeting skills" of the higher-ups in the party hierarchy. But I have my doubts.