Thanks for your interest in my TDG. According to the few people who have read it, I have done a reasonable job of “anticipating the critics.”

I spent six years in party politics in Canada, rising to lower middle management (I was working in the oilfield that had an unpredictable schedule, so my rise was limited). As time passed, I was becoming more disillusioned with the whole process.

The event that spawned the TDG was a nomination campaign. I was backing a friend who I believe would have been an excellent member of the Canadian parliament. Part of our strategy for this internal party election was to visit as many party members in their homes as possible. In this way, they would be more endeared to vote for my friend. My job was to make sure my friend did not stay too long in any one home as there were a lot of people to see.

One of these home visits was a teacher who had just retired and joined a political party for the first time in her life. As my friend was giving his usual spiel, I thought she will find out nothing about this guy except he looks good in a suit and speaks the party line real well. To her, my friend could have been an embezzler, wife-beater, or alcoholic. She would never know.

I then realized that we know so little about the people on the ballot that we really cannot make a good decision. And most party members are almost as blind in their own party elections as the citizenry is in the general election.

Thus were the gears set in motion to think up the TDG. How do we vote for someone we know reasonably well?