Promises Promises

We're more than half way through election year folks, and as usual, the candidates are just chock full of rhetoric and promises. Promises to improve the nation by fixing this, that, or the other thing. Just today, I received a flyer promoting one of our state's candidates for congress, a list of things so and so plans on fixing should they be elected. And as usual, I have a couple of points to bring up.

The first, and lesser of the two is this: do they really plan on fixing their selection of problems all by their lonesome. After all, the flyers, commercials, skywriting ads, et cetera, never say these people plan to help do all the things they have listed. They always act as though it will be them, and them alone who will be the one to take care of everything. As though they are some kind of congressional chosen one, without whom the government could never get anything done. I'm sure these candidates know they won't get anything done by themselves, so why pretend that way for the voters? Do they think that's the only way to get votes? Don't get me wrong. Confidence is a great thing. But this is more along the lines of hubris than simple confidence. And that kind of thing just makes them sound arrogant to me. But as I said, this is a minor point beside what I want to address next.

As I said earlier, with election year in full swing, the promises are out in force. And while it's great to know what your candidate wants to do if they get elected to office, I think it'd be even better if they'd explain just how they intend to go about doing it. After all, anyone with two brain cells to rub together can promise to fix something. That doesn't necessarily mean they have a single clue bout how to get it done. Or worse yet, they know how they want to go about doing it, but their idea would only make things worse. Here's an exaggerated example.

Let's just say that one of the major issues of the year was population control. Every candidate says they have the answer to curbing overpopulation. They all have sound scientific theories to back their ideas. But one of them, one pressed for an actual plan, says he would simply pick random people, line them up, and shoot them. And then he would have everyone forcibly sterilized until the government says otherwise. Would it fix the problem? Perhaps. But would it be a good idea to try? As much as I wouldn't mind seeing some of the morons out there killed or their ability to pollute the genepool removed, I don't think it would be. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would be the end of the campaign for anyone who endorsed that idea. But back to my point.

I don't have any problem with politicians making promises to fix this or change that, just as long as they come out at some point and at least tell me how they plan on doing it. You wouldn't want someone working on your car only to find out they haven't the first clue how to fix whatever problems there are. They'd be just as likely to gut the entire vehicle as they would be to fix anything. The same is true of politicians. I don't want someone to end up in office on the strength of promises they have no idea how to make good on, or whose ideas for keeping those problems would only make things worse.

All I ask is that, as a person who would seek office in any portion of our government, when you make a promise to do or fix something, you include with those promises the means by which you intend to fulfill those promises. After all, how you plan to do something is at least as important, if not more so, than the fact that you plan to do it at all.