A superlative presidential candidate
To the editor:
The most successful presidential candidate I am aware of was a third grade young lady who was elected to be class president in a rural school in a small town in southwest Pennsylvania in 1955. This political exercise was conducted as an educational exercise for the students by a most imaginative and capable teacher. We could, no doubt, use more teachers of her caliber today. Today the entire class room agenda is predetermined by a somewhat cooperative effort of the local school board, the individual state educational “experts,” and, of course, our really important “federal experts.” Unfortunately, this collection of “experts” would have a tendency to stifle such a teacher today.
This young lady designed her campaign to duplicate tactics she had observed the political candidates using in the previous local election. She printed and circulated a list of her goals as class president. It was a true stroke of genius. It read like a really large Xmas list to all of the students. She promised both shorter and fewer classroom days, longer summer vacations, longer lunch breaks, longer recess breaks, no more homework, ever, no more book reports, less teachers, no truant officers, elimination of the grading system, and last, but not least, free ice cream and candy for every one – everyday. You guessed it. She won the election for class president by a vast majority. As a matter of fact, nearly 100 percent of the votes.
When the teacher inquired as to who would be paying for all of these political promises, she frowned and said: “I never thought about that at all. I guess that might be a problem to solve before the next election.”
Does this theme sound familiar? It should. I heard Hillary Clinton make at least a dozen similar promises this week when she launched her run for president for 45 minutes on national TV. The big difference between these two candidates is Hillary is serious. Her fantasy is for real. A couple of things I did not hear Hillary mention, at all, was how she plans to pay for her fantasy, and not one word about our $18 (plus) trillion national debt and a spending deficit that is in the neighborhood of $30,000 per second, 24/7/365.
We should all be paying close attention to all of the unrealistic promises and outright fabrications we will be hearing from all of the presidential candidates of both political parties and try to ignore the mud they will be throwing at each other for the next 18 months.
R.E. Workman
Cape Coral