The Most Well-dressed Party Chairman?

In the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, today Sunday 31 January, it is claimed that the most welldressed Swedish political party leader is the rightwing party, the Moderates, leader Fredrik Reinfeldt.

It is an amazing choice and this newspaper and its readers is haunted by a phenomena which is known as selective perception. If you are promoting an aggressive and biased political agenda, you simply pick an choose. You select all the nice parts and take away all the nasty or unpleasant ones.

For instance, if you are an arrogant bastard, you're described as someone who knows what he wants, while your opponent, that is obviously less arrogant, is described as not knowing what he or she wants or lacking the ability to express clear views of their own opinions.

Michel Foucault once presented this as a way of controlling the discourse, and if it is used frequently enough the goal is to miscredit your opponent so that nothing they do or say are really being noticed.

The person who has no real arguments or opinions of how to solve problems, even imaginary ones, annd furthermore dresses improperly is surely not worth listening to. But then again, arguments like that always threatens to fall back on those who use them, doesn't they?

Turning back to the actual clothing, it also tend to fall back on you, doesn't it? Fredrik Reinfeldt went to China annd succeeded to wear clothes that does not seem to express sensitivity for the dress code as such. Comparing the Prime Minister with his hosts reveals a slight discrepancy...

Most well-dressed political party leader? I wonder where they got that idea?

Sources: Svenska Dagbladet (2008) Reinfeldts klädsel en tydlig signal (12 april 2008); Wikiquote (2010).