Election 2016: Calling All Presidential Hopefuls - It's Not About You
If you want to connect with Americans, at least a mere 99 percent of them, you need to deal with a psychological reality that you are all missing or at best, paying lip service to.
What political candidates need to get is what goes on in the minds of people that feel one down to people they are dependent on, but don't trust.
The legitimate Presidential candidate will be the one that can gain/earn the trust and confidence of a weary and wary populace.
And by the way, what people who lack trust and confidence need to see (much more than hear) their elected officials is not rocket science. What they need to see is a proven and verified track record.
Reagan's approach to Russia was, "Trust, but verify." Americans have heard enough words and rhetoric. They need to "verify then trust" and to "verify and then have confidence."
Trust
To trust you when they're one down and in a dependent position, people need to see a demonstrated and verified track record of you:
- Doing what you say you'll do, when you say you'll do it vs. disappointing your constituency and deflecting blame or responsibility off yourself.
- At the first sign of not being able to do it, of you notifying everyone it adversely affects and coming up with alternatives.
- Not hurting, taking advantage or exploiting people below you.
- Never serving your own personal, self-serving ambitious and politically expedient agenda if it in any way is at the cost of serving your constituency.
- Never being tempted to compromise your duty bound promise to serve your constituency.
- Taking full responsibility for anything that happens under your watch (JFK taking responsibility for the Bay of Pigs debacle).
Confidence
To have confidence in you whether they're in a one-down position or even as a peer to you, they need to see a demonstrated and verified track record of you:
- Already having gotten done what you promised.
- Already having gotten done what serves the greater and common good before the wealthy and the elite.
- Having been a crucial and key force in getting it done vs. taking credit for serendipity (how successful would Bill Clinton have been without the coincident mushrooming of technology and the Internet?)
- Successfully leading and guiding what served our national security and interests through perilous waters either domestically or with regard to foreign powers.
Something that few politicians truly understand or appreciate is the fear that percolates through people who are one down, distrustful and lacking confidence in the people they are dependent on. When that happens you live between near frustration, inertia and panic.
When politicians contemplate being one down, they see it as being "down in some pole" and are not so much afraid as they are frustrated and then emboldened to fight back. We saw that recently in the second GOP debate where candidates who felt one down to Donald Trump in the first one, attacked him back in the second one.
That is not the kind of one-down feeling that we are referring to.
If we can't get political hopefuls to understand their constituency's (or what everyone is calling the middle class) worries sufficiently to actually make and take a sustained effort to address them, maybe we should get them to feel those feelings.
So Mr. or Ms. Presidential hopeful, imagine how you'd feel if you brought your child or spouse with excruciating pain into the emergency room and had to make your way through bureaucratic red tape or be told they'd need to be transferred because of a problem with coverage. Or imagine that you go into heart surgery and smelled alcohol on the breath of your heart surgeon and anesthesiologist.
You'd be beyond frustrated; you'd be terrified. You might protest and say, "That's apples and oranges and our constituencies issues are not on the same level."
I beg to differ. They are on the same level.
So whichever of you becomes our next President be someone and do something that results in our being able to trust and have confidence in you.
Make us hopeful. If you could do that, you might even be able to make us proud.
And that is something we need nearly as much as hope.
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