The Grand Illusion
Now that Kamala Harris is officially the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, both the Republicans and the media are hounding her to provide specific detailed policy proposals. My advice to Harris and her campaign is simple.
DON’T DO IT!!!
First, despite all their claims to the contrary, neither Trump nor his campaign have come up with much in detail. Saying that you’ll Make America Great Again, deport illegal immigrants, stand up to Putin, and stop taxing income from tips are hardly a policy framework. They’re campaign slogans, and that’s about all anyone will get from Trump. More slogans, if that.
Now, there was a detailed Republican plan – Project 2025 – and, once leaked, Trump immediately claimed he never heard of it, and that should tell anyone that you shouldn’t believe any policy suggestion from Trump. As for deporting all illegal immigrants… anyone who does will destroy the American economy, because those illegal immigrants comprise an estimated 20% of the U.S. construction industry, doing dirty jobs that most Americans won’t or can’t do, at a time when we’re already short of housing that costs too much.
Second, the media only wants those detailed policy plans so that they can nitpick and criticize them to death, finding fault in every phrase. Such plans are just red meat to the media wolverines, no matter how much they claim they’re only seeking the truth. The truth is in fourth place behind audience support, advertising revenue, and newscasters’ egos.
Third, no detailed campaign policy proposal ever survives intact after contact with reality and economics. No economist can predict accurately what the economy—or the world political situation – will be five months plus from now. It’s fine to say that the U.S. needs to restructure homebuilding and home-buying to deal with high prices and inadequate supplies of shelter, or to restore bodily legal rights removed by state laws, but leave the details to the time when the new president actually has the power to do something. Because, if you don’t, the media – and the other side – will trash all too many good proposals in their attack to gain a few more percentage points of audience approval.
Being detailed in a campaign is one of those ideas that sounds wonderful… and can only lead to disaster, in all too many ways.
As much as I hate to agree, detailed campaign policy at this point is premature for Harris. Roll it out in the first 100 days of the new presidency.
If Trump wins, the details won’t matter and any plans that the Republicans do actually have will be moot because of the Orange Chaos Combover Monster can’t manage to see anything through except his own aggrandizement and prosecution/persecution of all those who ever faulted him (real or imagined).
Excellent post. An absolutely comical political press double-standard is in effect. Trump has been two weeks away from releasing his healthcare policy for replacing Obamacare – for about nine years now. Nowhere to be found, and nothing but crickets from the NY/DC press.
Yes, absolutely. She has no reason on earth to give them what they want. The press needs to hold Trump’s feet to the same fire as Harris.
(Especially since he’s even more laughable when he’s defensive.)
To come up with a policy proposal one has to define a problem, come up with a list of solutions, figure out how those solutions would interact with the other laws and programs already in place, calculate how much the proposals would cost, figure out how to pay for them, do the focus groups to see how popular and unpopular the proposals would be and whether other members of your party would support them, and spend at least a little time figuring out how your opponents would attack them and develop strategies to defend them.
The Idea that some who found out that they were running for president six weeks ago could develop several dozen of these and present them is ludicrous. The journalists who cover the election should know this, so I can only conclude that their call for these detailed positions is either posturing or ignorance.