You get what you vote for

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Well, the political campaign is down to days now instead of weeks ... and we’re seeing candidates making their final sales pitches. The ads, the mailers, the text messages—everybody wants your vote.

WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says he’s seen this movie before.

CAL THOMAS: If you live long enough, you hear the same promises and accusations repeated over and over by politicians of both parties.

Vote for me, they say: I’ll make your life better.

But is your life better—because of a politician? I doubt it. Mine usually gets worse when a politician succeeds in raising my taxes.

Democrats are recycling familiar arguments about the filthy rich versus everybody else. You’re supposed to envy people who make more money and live more extravagantly than you do. Then you’re supposed to elect politicians who promise to take more of their money and give it to you.

The Tenth Commandment says you shall not covet. That’s one commandment you don’t hear much about during election season.

Then there’s healthcare.

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed wants Medicare for All. He says people could trade the health insurance premiums coming out of their paychecks for higher taxes. Here’s how he explained it on Meet the Press in August. Listen.

ABDUL EL-SAYED: So imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for health care that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26, or got married or got divorced.

Alright, but how much is “a little bit more”? Details, details. They always come later.

And what about getting an appointment? Canada and Britain have plenty of experience with waiting lists for certain medical procedures. Are we supposed to believe we wouldn’t have similar problems here?

Meanwhile, I hate to beat a dead horse, but why are practically no politicians talking about reducing the national debt?

We’re now more than 40 trillion dollars in debt. Visit the national debt clock and watch those numbers spin.

There’s a reason politicians don’t want to talk about it. Getting serious about the debt means making cuts and reforms.

Republicans aren’t blameless here, either. They’ve been promising smaller government for years. I’d be interested in hearing which parts of government they propose to make smaller, and by how much.

I’m not in the habit of favorably quoting the late Alabama Governor George Wallace. But in his 1968 independent presidential campaign, he said there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.

Just listen to their campaign promises and tell me he didn’t have at least a point.

Gallup found a record 45 percent of adults calling themselves independents last year. I can see why.

But voters shouldn’t escape responsibility, either.

Politicians keep making these promises because people keep voting for them.

We elect these people. So if they keep failing to solve our problems, whose fault is that?

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

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