The excitement and euphoria of winning an important election can put a successful candidate in a frame of mind that they are ready to make all the decisions, to take on the awesome challenges of running the government.
Almost overnight their policy positions go from untested promises to specific popular proposals that may sound good to the public at the time. These untested proposals are often written by young campaign staffers who may have no governing experience or by longtime partisan political operatives, who have been loyal to the candidate and party but who don’t connect to a changing culture or to longtime citizens. Many political pros rely on what public opinion polls have to say about voter attitudes. This can often turn out to be an inaccurate and unreliable method to ascertain both the will of the voter, young and old, and to govern in a dramatically changing economic and technological environment.
Let me explain what I mean. While voters might often…
