Wishcraft

A question, that I wonder about sometimes. 

Given the degree to which the public in much of the developed world (and especially the United States) seems willing to support policies that are based on little more than wishful thinking, why would anyone expect that politicians drawn from said populations to be exclusively the people who don't?

While the Trump Administration is often a fairly clear example of governance by wishful thinking, the main difference between the current President and his predecessors is really simply a matter of how often his preferred outcomes seem to be completely at odds with the facts on the ground. Because honestly, President Biden wasn't anywhere near above wishful thinking, either.

But there's a constant undercurrent, at least in the media, that people should (and often do) vote for people who approach the world clear-eyed and rationally, rather than with the same emotional attachments that the voters themselves have. Even when it seems pretty clear that policy matters are being decided on emotional considerations, the idea that the people calling the shots somehow know better is always in the background.

It's true that not everyone thinks of the world in terms of "this is what I want, so there must be a low or no-cost way of bringing it about." But I don't know that it's reasonable to presume that no one in the political class would be drawn from that group. Especially when it's connecting with people, rather than a firm grasp on the likely outcomes of policies, that tend to drive people's voting patters; especially the marginally-attached "swing" voters whose choice to show up or not on Election Day tends to drive the outcomes.

President Trump is unusual in the sense that he's often very public with his apparent belief that things his voter base think are easy actually are easy. He's aided in this by the devotion of said voter base; this allows him to scapegoat the Democrats, the "deep state" or what -have-you whenever things actually turn out to be difficult. So he doesn't have to fall back on "things are complicated" when policies don't produce the claimed results. But he's not unique in thinking that policies that could come across as obviously flawed were going to be winners.

After all, he's a member of a public that tends to see the world this way, and likes to see their worldview mirrored back to them by their elected officials.