Posted on 09/15/2015 12:09:46 PM PDT by Steelfish
Now Is No Time to Be Voting for President Based on Emotion
by Thomas Sowell September 15, 2015 In a country with more than 300 million people, it is remarkable how obsessed the media have become with just one — Donald Trump. What is even more remarkable is that, after six years of repeated disasters, both domestically and internationally, under a glib egomaniac in the White House, so many potential voters are turning to another glib egomaniac to be his successor. No doubt much of the stampede of Republican voters toward Mr. Trump is based on their disgust with the Republican establishment. The fact that the next two biggest vote-getters in the polls are also complete outsiders — Dr. Ben Carson and Ms. Carly Fiorina — reinforces the idea that this is a protest. It is easy to understand why there would be pent-up resentments among Republican voters.
But are elections held for the purpose of venting emotions? No national leader ever aroused more fervent emotions than Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s. Watch some old newsreels of German crowds delirious with joy at the sight of him. The only things at all comparable in more recent times were the ecstatic crowds that greeted Barack Obama when he burst upon the political scene in 2008. Elections, however, have far more lasting, and far more serious — or even grim — consequences than emotional venting.
The actual track record of crowd-pleasers, whether Juan Peron in Argentina, Obama in America, or Hitler in Germany, is very sobering, if not painfully depressing. The media seem to think that participation in elections is a big deal. But turnout often approaches 100 percent in countries so torn by bitter polarization that everyone is scared to death of what will happen if the other side wins.
But times and places with low voter turnout are often times and places when there are no such fears aroused by having an opposing party win. Despite many people who urge us all to vote, as a civic duty, the purpose of elections is not participation. The purpose is to select individuals for offices, including president of the United States. Whoever has that office has our lives, the lives of our loved ones and the fate of the entire nation in his or her hands.
An election is not a popularity contest, or an award for showmanship. If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter. An election is not a popularity contest, or an award for showmanship. If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter. And if you are not informed, then the most patriotic thing you can do on Election Day is stay home. Otherwise your vote, based on whims or emotions, is playing Russian roulette with the fate of this nation.
All the hoopla over Donald Trump is distracting attention from a large field of other candidates, some of whom have outstanding track records as governors, where they demonstrated courage, character, and intelligence. Others have rhetorical skills like Trump or a serious mastery of issues, unlike Trump.
Even if Trump himself does not end up as the Republican nominee for the presidency, he will have done a major disservice to both his party and the country if his grandstanding has cost us a chance to explore in depth others who may include someone far better prepared for the complex challenges of this juncture in history.
After the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, we are entering an era when people alive at this moment may live to see a day when American cities are left in radioactive ruins. We need all the wisdom, courage and dedication in the next president — and his or her successors — to save us and our children from such a catastrophe. Rhetoric and showmanship will certainly not save us. Donald Trump is not the only obstacle to finding leaders of such character.
The ultimate danger lies in the voting public themselves. All too many signs point to an electorate including many people who are grossly uninformed or, worse yet, misinformed. The very fact that the voting age was lowered to 18 shows the triumph of the vision of elections as participatory rituals, rather than times for fateful choices.
If anything, the age might have been raised to 30, since today millions of people in their 20s have never even had the responsibility of being self-supporting, to give them some sense of reality. We can only hope that the months still remaining before the first primary elections next year will allow voters to get over their emotional responses and concentrate on the life-and-death implications of choosing the next president of the United States.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
This article originated on Creators and has also been published at IBD, Townhall, and Real Clear Politics, in addition to National Review.
I know the GOPe thinks we are not smart enough to make this decision.
Proof for them is in the polling.
We must be really disappointing our masters.
Here is your 30 peices of silver Tom, surly you will be invited to all the ‘good’ partys.
There are two basic types of Trump supporters.
1. Those who naively see him as some sort of savior for Conservatives and their policy concerns, and...
Those who see him as a Destroyer. A destroyer of the status quo, not matter the outcome.
I count myself among the latter.
Because all Trump’s supporters will one day wake up and decide they want more GOP Establishment betrayals after all.
I respect Dr Sowell but the emotion in this case is anger. The anger began with the GOP-e handingbthe nomination to Bob Dole in 1996. It cooled a bit with W but he was never my ideal president. My mood soured with the twin disasters of McCain and Romney Now I’m pissed. Unlike the wife who refund to the badtard who beat her, I’m done. I think Trump is a horse’s ass but he’s just the kind of jerk to upset the “politics as usual” crap that could have delivered us Christie as a candidate in 2016.
We are fighting all those -isms and more but we are first and foremost fighting the media.
It is the distorted perception of America rendered by media, media driven polls, and the staffers and lobbyists who inject their personal agendae which would make it difficult for the Conservative minded Congressman or Senator to have a clear view of what Americans think (provided they even cared).
It is the media which have promoted Anti-American ideas since Cronkite pronounced the Vietnam War lost despite the overwhelming defeat of Viet Cong forces during the Tet Offensive.
It is the Media which sold Clinton, Obama, and to keep their own beds warm, the Gay agenda to America, --every aspect of that media from sitcoms to movies to the nightly news.
By blowing one topic out of proportion, emotionalizing another, demonizing a third, they shape the opinion and train of thought of America, and define what is trendy, acceptable, or heinous.
They truly make up down, right wrong, evil good, and burn cities in the process. There is untold blood on their hands.
“We must have universal health care I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one..The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees. We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan.”
That doesn’t sound like a man who thinks it wouldn’t work here...
And, even if he did, “it works there, but wouldn’t here” is economic balderdash. The self-defeating incentives and costs created by single-payer universal health care are inherent to the system, not the location where it is implemented. In the long run, it doesn’t work—can’t work—anywhere.
He said single payer wouldn’t work now. Allowing that when he spoke in praise of it in the past it was a good idea.
Who knows, he might decide it’s a good idea again?
He has no principle in play here. That’s the danger. He’s not guided by anything except what he thinks is right.
“He has no principle in play here. That’s the danger. He’s not guided by anything except what he thinks is right.”
I don’t think he’s even guided by that. I think he’s guided by what will get him the most attention, and now the most cheers from his adoring fans.
Good point.
What a wasted moment. To unleash all this anger before we capture the White House.
Trump fans: win first, then purge. Not blow up your own party and regret President Biden or Sanders.
The entire election is based on emotion.
It is rare but I disagree.
If there ever was, a time to vote on emotions this is it. People emotionally voted for "Hope and Change". There must be a time to emotionally vote for "A Great Plan, The Best Plan"? How much worse could it be.
This may well be that time.
Tell Erik Erickson he can relax; Trump said in the GOP debate that single payer wouldn’t work in the US.
Excellent post, spot on.
So now you admit that in the debate Trump said single payer wouldn’t work in the US. Originally all you said was that he praised single payer in the debate.
Forgive me if I am sick to death of the dishonesty deployed to attack Trump. It is shameful.
That shows that he would not piss on our religious beliefs like the current resident of the White House.
Note my new tagline ...
And he said, up until the debate, that it works elsewhere and that we should consider it here. So, he lacks the understanding of health care economics to realize that no, it doesn’t work anywhere, and/or he was just pandering to the GOP debate audience when he said that it wouldn’t work here.
Do you agree with a Trump’s statement that single payer health care works elsewhere?
Can you explain how it could possibly be the case that it works “there” but not “here”?
Do facts matter in your fantasy universe?
You argue like a fourteen yo. In the past Trump said single payer worked elsewhere. But he had not been ‘saying that up to the debate’ as you claim. It is pathetic to watch you, your fellow Trump haters, and Erik Erickson contort the truth to smear Trump. What are you hoping to prove? Dishonesty will win no one to your side: zero. The very fact that you are forced to misrepresent Trump defeats your argument.
Btw, only low IQers resort to riffing on my screen name. This is an observation/fact I have never seen to fail.
What is it about the electorate that sent Obama to the WH twice and that knows more about Miley Cyrus than Lois Lerner that makes you think we “win” anything after you have “destroyed” our system?
Be careful what you ask for
Please explain the economic principles that would allow single-payer universal health care to work elsewhere (as Trump STILL claims), but not here.
In the alternative, a simple “he’s wrong” will do.
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