Called to order

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Perhaps it's not always appreciated that there are two distinct classes of political journalist.

One consists of the tireless men and women who are convinced that all politicians are, in one way or another, "at it."

That's to say that virtually everything they do is driven by self-interest and that their chosen methods usually involve various forms of dishonesty and deception.

On the other side of this trade, though, there are those who are less decided about the shortcomings of our elected representatives.

Politicians, this group says, are often decent individuals - well-meaning even if a little given to self-importance and pomposity - who genuinely want to contribute to the betterment of society and who work hard and honourably to do so.

If they often fail it is much less the result of corruption than it is of misfortune, over-ambition and sometimes a lack of competence.

When we think of the last few years in Welsh politics - a period in which we could in fact be said to have invented Welsh politics - it's the names rather than the policies that leap immediately to mind

They are not bad people, simply people who are more or less as imperfect as the rest of us.

It is to this second view of the political world that we on Called to Order usually subscribe.

In particular, I think, we are keenly interested in the character of politics and politicians.

That is often deplored, of course ("Can't you concentrate on the issues?"), but it is often what is revealed and concealed by the nature and behaviour of the people involved that gives us the best insight into what they are trying to do in the name of us, the voters.

When we think of the last few years in Welsh politics - a period in which we could in fact be said to have invented Welsh politics - it's the names rather than the policies that leap immediately to mind - Ron Davies, Alun Michael, Rhodri Morgan, Rod Richards, Mike German, Dafydd Wigley, Ieuan Wyn Jones and Peter Hain are just a few who have been leading players in the dramas that have been staged in Cardiff Bay, Westminster and elsewhere.

Some of them have also contributed a very welcome element of comedy to public life in Wales, even if they don't always appreciate it themselves.

But that too is an element we try not to ignore in Called to Order.

One of the jobs of political journalists is to take those figures as a challenge rather than a reason for despair; to keep tapping the public on the shoulder and saying: "This matters to you."

Not least because when we go on air at the end of the week we reckon listeners might welcome a little relief from the waves of information and competing claims that have swept over them during the past five or six days.

So rather than rehearsing once again the main arguments or initiatives of a particular week we try to stand a little to one side and unpick some aspect of the subject so that we might understand it better.

Illumination could emerge, for example, from the language of politics: after all, look at all the trouble that simple word independence has caused down the years.

Or sometimes looking at events in the past can give us an insight into what is happening to us today: for instance the return of traditional tensions between the trades unions and a Labour government.

Above all, though, we don't subscribe to the fashionable view that politics is boring.

Quite the reverse, indeed, as in the last four years or so have been brought closer to the decisions that affect our lives.

And if nothing else it's provided us with a kind of continuous (and free) reality programme in which, from time to time, we get the chance to vote various characters out of the series.

Of course the statistics of falling election turnouts are quoted to support the idea that the voters are increasingly indifferent.

That might well turn out to be a temporary phenomenon but, in any case, one of the jobs of political journalists - whichever category they fall into - is to take those figures as a challenge rather than a reason for despair; to keep tapping the public on the shoulder and saying: "This matters to you."