Can keeping your word be a bad thing? Hell, yes.

I remember when my year-long tour in Vietnam was ending, the army asked me what my preferences were regarding my next duty station. This is generally referred to as a “dream list,” and it usually is.
 

I think politicians engage in the same sort of deceit on the campaign trail. They tell us all the good things they hope to do. Whether they are conning us or themselves doesn’t matter. Someone’s getting played. Voters are not necessarily innocent bystanders. They get their hopes up, for whatever reasons, knowing that it is all a game.

In the end, none of this matters.

Government and politics being what they are, more often than not, the unexpected rules the day and the promises go into the “Save for future” bin. A president fortunate enough to be able to fulfill a promise will discover his victory comes at a price. Half the country will love him and half will hate him and the final product likely won’t be recognized by anyone.

Just as with the army’s “dream list,” you never know. “Be careful what you wish for,” has been valuable advice since the days of Aesop’s Fables for good reason.

The election of 2016 was a little different than most. Okay, it was a lot different. It was more vulgar, for sure. It was the first one in which both the FBI and Russia played significant roles. It was the first one in which the two major parties were represented by a woman and a reality T.V. star. It goes without saying that it was the most expensive election ever, but that will only last until the next one, which I guess makes it the same as every previous one.

There was also one other major difference. 2016 was the first year that a candidate did not promise to do things, but rather promised to undo things—and when I say things, I mean everything.

These are the Trump promises of election year 2016:

The weight of a bad promise

This article appeared in the Virginian-Pilot, on July 30. They made one change replacing, "They gave us images of Uncle Sam in an ob/gyn clinic, donning rubber gloves and preparing to do what our current president has bragged about doing without gloves." with simply, "They gave us images of Uncle Sam in an ob/gyn clinic.” I kind of expected the change but it would have been interesting to see Republican “Fake news” (the ad) featured alongside the real news (Trump on tape) that he and his supporters would like us to forget.     

THE MOST COMMON defense I’ve heard for the Republican “Repeal and Replace Obamacare” bills, whether they be from Senators or Congressmen, is that they made promises to their constituents and they must keep their word.

President Obama also made a promise—to the country as a whole—to extend health care coverage to everyone, Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike. He kept that promise. Interestingly, Republicans on the day he was elected promised their base they would have nothing to do with this effort, and on day two and every day afterwards, continued with their “Repeal and Replace” promise.

Republicans warned about death panels. They gave us images of Uncle Sam in an OBGYN clinic. They continually tell us the richest country in the world can’t afford to do what every other country in the world does routinely. They are at a loss as to why drugs costing $70,000 in this country only cost $7,000 in other countries. Worst of all, they appear to seriously believe that money spent on poor, elderly, and sick people can be better spent by millionaires and billionaires.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we promise to deceive.

Yeah, I know. It doesn’t go this way. How about this one?  Don’t make promises if you can’t keep them, or if you shouldn’t keep them.

Promises always make life difficult.

I know this from watching Law and Order, the History Channel, and listening in on any interview with any Republican politician on any news show.

The cop shows up at a crime scene, feels remorse for the helpless victim and says something that makes his partner cringe. “Don’t worry ma’am. We’ll get the guy who did this.” He might have the best intention, but he can’t predict the outcome of the case and his partner let’s him know this.

General MacArthur, when driven from the Philippines promised, “I shall return.” Luckily, for him, he was able to keep that promise but it didn’t come about easily and the cost was high.

Then you have the GOP for the last seven years, promising to repeal and replace Obamacare. Unlike the poor cop on the beat, or MacArthur boarding a boat, they didn’t have what you might call honorable intentions. The driving force behind their promise was to stick it to Obama.

“Repeal and replace” has become the holy grail of Republican politics. Every Republican in every state in every district for the last seven years has been running against Obamacare.

How has this ruse paid off? What has it gotten them?

Well, it’s taken a while, a lot of money, and a lot of bad faith promises, but they finally have complete control of the federal government—Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, and a fair share of the state governments. What they are learning, in the words of the titular head of the party, is that health care reform is harder than anyone thought. Repeal and replace is even harder still.

Yet, all we hear from these opportunists is, “We made a promise—to our constituents—and we have to keep that promise.” What their constituents are telling them is, if they replace, “Repeal and replace,” with “We’re going to take away your health insurance,” many of those constituents are prepared to replace their elected officials.

There are good promises and there are bad promises.

If you make a good promise, work hard to achieve it, but eventually fail, people will be mad but they will probably understand. This is the way it was for a long time for politicians trying to extend health care benefits until Obama finally succeeded in doing so.

On the other hand, if you make bad promises, work extra hard, even fanatically hard, to achieve them but keep coming up short, sensible people are going to say maybe you should rethink the original promise.

This is the problem with health care in America. Too many people don’t have coverage. Drugs are too expensive. Pharmaceutical companies are motivated more by making a profit than making people better. So are insurance companies. Scam artists are taking advantage of patients, insurance companies and government agencies to make a crooked buck.

A promise to fix these problems will go a long way to making people forget Republican s have spent the last seven years trying to fulfill a bad promise.     

Runaway Trump Train

I was recently driving through New York State and saw something, which I imagine a lot of states are doing. They had set aside designated areas to pull off the road and text. We are all aware of the serious problem driving while texting creates on our highways.

Even more catastrophic are the train accidents and derailments we’ve read about that were caused by engineers texting, tweeting and do whatever they do on their gadgets when they’re supposed to be driving a train.

Then, there’s the Trump Train—not as spectacular or breathtaking as the Trump jet, but nevertheless the vehicle that was going to take America to that place called “Great Again.” The nations was going to ride this vehicle to that place where neither crime nor terrorism existed and everyone had a job. A place where everyone had health care that wasn’t Obamacare but was better than Obamacare. A place where everyone could grow up to become a billionaire or be president or even become a billionaire who become president. Oil, gas and coal would be back and would be cleaner and cheaper than ever. Guns would be in and newspapers would be out.

When this train finally reached its destination, foreign nations would again respect us . Our enemies would fear us. Our friends would love us and show their gratitude by showering us with money they've been stashing under their mattresses while we paid all the bills.

Poverty would be eliminated and education would be expanded and improved and made available to everyone. This train would take the country out of the dirty, congested cities back to the rural, picturesque America that trains used to ride through. Most of all, we could stop worrying about climate change and start enjoying the ever-increasing number of summer days suddenly appearing in January and February.

This was going to be the all-inclusive train taking everyone to the Promised Land—ALL ABOARD. Everyone except illegal immigrants who are probably murderers and rapist, refugees who are probably terrorists, and those of our own citizens who are too lazy to take care of themselves. Believe it.

Then something happened. Something no one saw coming—well some people saw it coming but no one paid attention to them. One group of citizens saw a candidate tweeting through the night and questioned his qualification to be president. “Who does that?” They asked. Certainly not the leader of the free world. Others said, sure, it’s not presidential but he isn’t president yet. Once he gets in office, once he gets that Trump Train started up and moving in the right directions, everything will be all right.

But everything isn’t all right.

For one thing, the train doesn’t have a crew—except for that crazy guy sitting with Trump in the engine car stoking the fires. No one seems to have given him a schedule so the train seems to be ambling along in all directions at once. At times, he seems to be speeding ahead and at other times, it appears the train has come to a complete halt. He flies through some stations like he couldn’t care less who was there waiting to get on.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all, he’s still tweeting. He’s tweeting when he’s supposed to be driving. People have told him to stop and like a teenager with a new license, he thinks he’s invincible. I suppose he will have to learn the hard way. So Sad.