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Americans who, in 2008, voted for abstract, fill-in-the-blanks concepts of "hope" and "change" might have dug a little deeper into the philosophy upon which those concepts were based. They might have explored the associations and the voting record of the one who promised, instead of substituting their own hopes and dreams for his illusory promises.

The ideas of Mao, Marx, and Lenin, implemented with the strategies of Alinsky, cannot be expected to yield liberty, opportunity, and plenty. On the other hand, a pledge of return to the principles of liberty expressed in America's Declaration of Independence, the 1787 Constitution, and the 200-year history of American freedom, accompanied by a record of study of those ideas and a voting record which supported the promise, would have been a better foundation for measuring a leader worthy of the role.

"I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing by every device the public debt on the principle of its being a public blessing." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:77

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, campaign contributions by government-sector unions, collected through mandatory dues, help elect the public officials who are then supposed to negotiate with them: “The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table.”