Candidates have long waged election campaigns on catchy slogans, snappy jingles, popular promises and misleading but memorable mottos.
It’s getting worse. The music is better but the lyrics are lacking. Vagueness is in vogue.
The less specific candidates are with their actual plans to fulfill campaign promises, the less the opposition and analysts can pick apart the flaws.
Running for president or Congress? Promise more funding for child care, lower taxes, lower prices at the grocery store, stronger defense, defeating China for jobs and investment, protecting the U.S. border, more housing at affordable prices — and making every kid clean up their room.
Running for state office in Alaska? A big Permanent Fund dividend is easy to write into your campaign script. Forget about promising lower taxes, it’s even better to pledge no taxes. Campaign for state control over resources; getting federal management out of our lives while cashing more federal checks every year; lower energy prices; fast snowplowing and even faster pothole repairs. And making every kid do their homework early.
Forget that state revenues are insufficient to cover it all, or that the federal budget is nearing a quarter-century of consecutive annual deficits. Promise voters what they want to hear and don’t sweat the details, especially the money. Candidates pledge more than the treasury can afford because they know a lot of it will never come true.
“I’ve been analyzing presidential platforms since the 2008 election, and with some exceptions it seems that in each election there’s less detail and less concern about paying for stuff,” Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal last week.
“In 2016, Trump’s Make America Great Again worked because it was vague,” Nathan Gonzales, editor of the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections. “Voters could project whatever they wanted from it.”
As we’re down to the final 10 weeks of the presidential, congressional and state legislative races, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to propose some new unfulfillable slogans, promises and campaign lines. No sense leaving it all to professional campaign consultants to make up this stuff. Besides, they have no sense of humor.
Looking back through history, many campaign one-liners have mentioned food: “Vote yourself a farm and horses” (1860, Abraham Lincoln); “Four more years of the full dinner pail” (1900, William McKinley); “A chicken in every pot” (1908, from Herbet Hoover supporters); “Not just peanuts” (1976, Jimmy Carter); and “Where’s the beef” (1984, stolen by Walter Mondale’s campaign from Wendy’s).
Here are my half-baked, parboiled and underdone suggestions for candidates who want to stand out in the shopping cart of politics by appealing to hungry voters:
- “I’m no Ding Dong”
- “Tougher than an overcooked steak”
- “As durable as Pilot Bread”
- “I have no beef with vegetarians”
- “No skin in the game with skinless chicken”
- “Farmed salmon are full of manure”
- “Crabs are all that they’re cracked up to be”
- “Don’t let your vote give you heartburn”
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