Want a fun activity? Ask political insiders which is a better reflection of political reality – satires like Veep and the Thick of It or political conspiracy dramas like House of Cards.I'll bet they all choose the satires. They are closer to the reality of politics where everyone is always hanging on by their fingernails. Trying to keep it together with minimal resources, lots of big egos, varying degrees of skill and experience and a lot of “make it up while we go along” spirit. Add to that a constant stream of unforeseen events and you get the turmoil known as political life.Political insiders don't believe in conspiracies. Why? Because just as the conspiracy was about to be executed, you would discover that someone forgot to send a crucial email or book a meeting room. You would learn that the computer hacker had decided to work from home that day, claiming they had permission, even though no one remembers granting it. And the field operative would stop answering their emails and phone calls for three hours for no apparent reason, later claiming they had no idea how that could happen because their phone was on.As a provincial cabinet minister, I occasionally asked myself whether the public could really handle the truth behind a particular situation. Usually the actual facts were so ridiculous we realized that no one would believe us.Remember the release of the gas plant documents? The constant stream of new batches that seemed to appear every other week after some hapless minister (usually me) had reassured everyone that they had all been released? The releases that always resulted in cries of “cover-up” from the opposition and the press?Years later I can now confess something: there was no huge file marked gas plant documents from which we picked and chose what to release. No, there were millions of electronic records that had to be searched by overworked and stressed out public servants inputting keywords and phrases. Is it any surprise that new material kept coming up?Which brings us to the Patrick Brown sex-ed letter debacle. The one where thousands of voters in Scarborough—Rouge River received a letter signed by Brown claiming he would repeal the new curriculum. The letter that Patrick Brown denies having seen and maintains is not a reflection of party policy.The conspiracy theorists had a field day with this one. How could Brown have been unaware when both his chief of staff and party president knew about it? Why did it take Brown five days to disavow it? All of this led to the Star running a “What did he know and when did he know it?” headline.The plot thickened with more revelations that the Tories, including Brown, tried to negotiate a sex-ed statement with the social conservative crowd in the lead up to the byelection; a statement that resembled the letter that eventually went out.  And yesterday we learned that one of his MPPs had tried to use the letter to raise funds. Did Brown approve the wording and hope that it would fly under the radar?Good grief! We are talking about the provincial Tories here. Does anyone really think they are capable of engineering such a sophisticated manipulation of voters and the media? Do we really see Brown as some mastermind ready to disavow all knowledge of the plan like that recorded voice on Mission: Impossible was always threatening to do to Peter Graves?No, the moment I heard Brown explain that he couldn't be reached about the letter because his cell phone was off while meeting with former Premier Bill Davis – a story so ridiculous it had to be true, I realized that this was nothing more than the usual comedy of errors associated with political reality.Instead of conspiracy, I see a fractious leader's office, a byelection campaign with too many bosses and a busy leader floating in and out of the loop; all trying to find a sex-ed policy that would magically please those on all sides of the issue.In short, I see normal political life at Queen's Park.The funniest line on the subject actually came from NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who told the Toronto Star, “We work as a team in my office and certainly I am pretty much dialed into everything.”I love that kooky NDP sense of humour.The real trouble for the PCs in this episode is that it demonstrates the unrest within its ranks over sex-ed. Too many rank-and-file members seem to have been unaware of the new policy, in denial about it or hoping that it could be changed. It's not the type of unity the PCs need going into the next election.The political world is a dysfunctional one. Patrick Brown has much to explain in terms of his flip-flop on sex-ed, but what happened with his letter seems much more the stuff of Veep than House of Cards.John Milloy is a former MPP and Ontario Liberal cabinet minister currently serving as the co-director of the Centre for Public Ethics and assistant professor of public ethics at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, and the inaugural practitioner in residence in Wilfrid Laurier University's Political Science department. He is also a lecturer in the University of Waterloo's Master of Public Service Program.  John can be reached at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @John_Milloy.  A version of this column was originally published in QP Briefing.