Politicians are a special breed. Their value system is a short list of necessities for gaining and maintaining Power. The list is:
Buy Votes
Of course, that is a pretty short list but I think you can see that virtually all campaign platforms offer various special interests perks to buy their votes. This is often referred to as pandering and hardly is disdained.
Trump and Biden alike pander to their base. Trump touts policies to garner votes and Biden throws around freshly printed cash to buy his. This is not an exaggeration.
Trump promises mass Deportations believing he has his finger on the pulse of his base who wants a closed border and removal of illegal immigrants.
Biden just announced another outrageous free cash plan by canceling student debt.
I am old enough to remember some notable campaigns like Nixon who touted Law and Order. Or Carter who promised a sweater in every closet due to his energy savings campaign.
I keep my hand in enough to know whose promises appeal to my sensibilities. But I am aware that most promises get broken, so it is a somewhat fanciful if not farcical exercise. Naturally, I hope the promises I align with will be fulfilled, but as the expression goes, it is hoping against hope.
The promise that resonates within me is not from a front runner but a loser in the GOP Primaries. It comes from Vivek Ramaswamy who campaigned on his promise to eradicate entire Federal Governmental Departments considering them lost money and unreformable. I think he is right in respect to eliminating:
- The Department of Education
- The FBI
- The Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Services
- The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Vivek expresses reasoning that I agree with, but the bureaucracy and cost are enough reason for me. In fact I'd prefer his list be expanded. His broad promise was the promise to reduce and limit the size and influence of the Federal Government. Oh man, did he discover the price of my vote.
Candidates say things to get votes. They all do. But what they say rarely crosses over party lines to get changed sides. Trump doesn't say things that get Dems to defect and likewise Biden never says anything that gets defections from GOP voters. These two camps have their bases and talking points and promises shaped by them. So the game goes on, each candidate making the promises that fires up their base while the voting public, in order to have any hope, ignores the unlikelihood that any promises will be kept. They do it to just get by another day imagining what they think would be a better world.
The promise I'd like to hear is one of moral and fiscal clarity. If a candidate would say “I promise to govern with my Christian sensibilities, and my Austrian Fiscal views”, the election would be a one voter landslide. That would get my attention and my vote. I believe more than half of the country wants similar promises but we get traditional pablum and pandering to special interest by goofs saying “AMERICA IS DPENDENT ON TRANSGENDER iLLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND LAWLESSNESS IN ORDER TO DELIVER THE AMERICAM DREAM” or worse. It is the politics in America that keeps it from being great again. But Viveks approach, which admittedly has no chance of being supported by the majority of voters, which is almost anarchist nature, could begin a new era back to smaller government and fiscal responsibility.
Normally, I would find agreement with Trump's policies over Bidens. No contest really. But I do not have my eyes closed to the guaranteed resistance that departmental lifetime bureaucrats will be bring to anyone who challenges their birthright. I now am so jaded as to prefer a return to the King. Hell, what's a little tea tax compared to the present scheme.
If your honest about it, your vote is being bought. If you are dishonest about it, perhaps there is hope for you in being ashamed to admit the fact. Either way, you are bought and sold in Americas disturbingly distorted and corrupt political system. Under the guise of Democracy we get ruled by an ever increasing disdainful class of would be Kings.
God Bless the King.
Best,
Donn Marier
DM-Your Own CFO