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Every single presidential candidate is promising that he or she will make our lives better if we elect him or her to the White House. He or she will give us change, offer us hope, make our breath sweeter, make us more prosperous, more productive, happier, better educated, holier and healthier if we cast our vote for him or her.
Presidents simply cannot change much for most of us. For the huge majority of Americans, how much we earn, how healthy we are, how well our kids are educated, that’s all up to us, not the federal government. No government program will make us middle class or rich if we don’t get educated in some way and work hard. No government program will make us healthy if we eat too much or smoke or drink too much, or don’t get exercise. The government cannot provide a lavish retirement for us if we don’t save and invest well. Oh, and all that money the candidates promise to spend? That’s your money, not their money, they’re spending.
In a free society, what we are and who we are depends on us, except for the very most poor among us, where the government can indeed make a difference. But for the huge bulk of us Americans no matter what any Republican or any Democrat promises, it’s up to the people in our house, not the White House. For most of us, what the politicians say is just sideshow barking, and when the circus leaves town we’ve got to get back to basics: work, save and teach your children well, and enjoy the political show. But it’s just show business, not real business.
Ben Stein, CBS News: Sunday Morning, cited in Forbes (May 19, 2008), page 22
Granted Ben Stein leans right politically, but there is something to be said about how much hope we put in a presidential candidate. I do think that who we elect to the White House does matter (a bit more than Stein’s conclusion). Had Al Gore been president in 2000, we most likely would not be at war in Iraq and would not have had the “Bush Tax Cuts.” It seems things would have been fundamentally different for us as Americans.
However, I do agree with Stein in how we may put too much stock in the power of a president or legislator. We speak of Presidential candidates as serving sort of Messiah’s for us. We have high hopes for what they can and should accomplish. I recognize that our leaders must inspire us to believe in them and their brand of politics, but at the end of the day, our candidate will have far less impact than we credit them.
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I agree with much of what Stein says, but like you, I don’t think he gives enough weight to electoral decisions — an odd sentiment given his role in the Nixon administration. I’m pretty diligent about saving money, but the government does play a role in how much I am able to save (taxes) and how well my savings performs (interest rates). I like how he pushes people to see themselves as their kids’ primary educators, but again, if one’s child is in public schools, our elected officials have some say in the matter of what and how they learn, and in the cases of public universities, how much it costs to attend those schools.
I agree that we tend to put too much stock in our elected officials for good or for ill. Bush has been either a savior making our lives better, or a bogeyman conspirator. I pine for a day that our politicians could restate Kennedy’s exhortation to ask not what the country could do for us but ask what we could do for the country.
I’m not sure if we’ve ever been a nation that doesn’t see our elected officials as messiahs to some degree. I think of the sermons after Lincoln’s assassination or the fact that Washington had to buck popular sentiment to not seek a third term. We’re rugged individualists, but we seem to be a people that looks for someone in whom we can put our faith and when we find them, we believe in them easily. I think of the hagiographies of Reagan from the right and FDR from the left.