2006.05.06
So You Want to be President?
Here’s a message to any candidate that wants to win the Presidential election next cycle:
Promise to bring Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi down. Promise to get revenge on them. Be prepared to deliver on that revenge. Tell us it doesn’t end there and that you have a focused multi-pronged plan to pursue and shut down various financial opportunities for terrorist funding and pursuing other known terrorists. Make a Most Wanted list and promise keep us informed of progress.
You’ll win the election.
I don’t say this because there aren’t other desperate issues that need addressing. Our national debt is a shame, our international public relations is a joke, our public education systems are looked up to by almost no one except countries without education, our health care is sucking the life out of individuals and corporations, “national security” has to be put in quotes because, really, national security? These are serious issues, but they won’t get you elected.
What will get you elected is something everyone can identify with, and that is finally taking care of those who bitch slapped America and seemed to have gotten away with it Scott-free (apologies to my friend with the same name). The majority of Americans can get behind this. Those that can’t either don’t vote in the first place (because they can’t abide “the system”) or are such a minority that their vote won’t diminish the outcome.
All people, Americans included, are more influenced by their emotions than their intellect. This is something the conservative think tanks know. This is why conservatives have been winning elections in recent years. Not by giving weight to actual issues but by focusing on issues that really don’t matter from our government’s Constitutional mandate: Defending the Nation, protecting personal property, protecting citizen’s rights, building common infrastructure, educating the people, etc.
According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to … first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, so far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice, and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain…Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter IX
Instead they focus on abortion, homosexual rights, evolution, etc. Everyone can have an opinion on these issues, even stupid people. These issues can also motivate anyone (especially the noisy ones) to polarized positions.
Pursuing terrorists and promising to capture and/or kill them is similar. Anyone can have an opinion on it, except that most people’s opinions are going to state that they support capturing and/or killing the terrorists. It doesn’t divide Americans, however, it unifies us. It’s a promise President Bush made and has failed to make good upon. We haven’t captured bin Laden or al-Zarqawi. He says we’ve captured innumerable terrorists but where’s the proof? I could say I have a million dollars but where’s the proof except my word?
If you want to be the next President of the United States of America promise this one thing and so you will attain the office. Just remember to follow up on your promise.
(Thanks to Mookee for the Adam Smith quote)
1 Comment Categorized: political thoughts
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One Response to “So You Want to be President?”
- Mookee says (May 6th, 2006 at 12:56:05 )
Wow … sounds very Mookesque (Mookee-esque?) — if you ask me. Government doing what it’s supposed to be doing as laid down in the Consitution? What a novel F!#&ing concept. Can’t disagree with anything you’ve said in this one. I’m not going to blame this current administration any more than the previous one, or the one before it. Is the current adminstration doing this? Yes, of course, but this is a systematic problem that has been going on for a long time. People look to the government to take care of them (not everyone, but enough of them), and those people complain, and it’s hard to tell a starving person no … doesn’t matter if they’re starving because they’re too lazy to work … so, over time, government invades our own private lives. It’s a subtle process, and initially I’d say probably not even intentional, at least not on this level.
Everyone knows the story of the frog in hot water. Put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. Put that same frog into room temperature water and slowly raise the pot to boiling, it will just sit there and let itself cook to death. The American people are frogs, and the government (whether intentional or not) has slowly brought the pot to a boil.
