The intent of your post is sound and I agree with, however, it falls into the common trap of focusing on the personality, rather than the policy. This was, in my opinion, the biggest disappointment and failure of the last election. Even moreso when you consider that the personalities were not particularly aspiring to begin with.
We had individuals and parties rock up with, at best, vague policies; undisclosed policies; misrepresented policies; uncosted policies; core and non-core policies; or no policies.
We allowed this - and we allowed our discussions around the water-cooler, driveways, forums to be reduced to a word for word verbatim from the personality as the rational basis for our decisions.
We have subsequently learned that this is not the key to good politics. And this is a good learning to have - albeit, a rather painful one for all.
There was a thread that was started yesterday about the achievements of the TA government. If anything, the biggest achievement so far, in my opinion, is a reawakening at grassroots to discussing policy (and what we think would make better policy). These discussions are at times still a base-level discussion with a significant overuse of verbatim, but a discussion nonetheless.
While I am hopeful that we can expect different in the next election, I think this style of politics will stick around for some time (with a possible increase in minor party/independent representation). This will be a consequence of strategists (mostly imported) where electoral success has been demonstrated on the personality factor. We will continue to learn.
There is a general recognition that the current politics is nothing to be proud of; certainly not for one of the oldest democracies in the world.
