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Useful hints for the confused:
- Be careful with the incumbents of all sorts. Experience is necessary for pilots or surgeons, not so for elected officials. Nothing raises the level of laziness and arrogance more than a position of power. Any power.
- Be careful with people whose material position is bound to improve substantially when elected. Everybody is an idealist – before the election day.
- Be careful voting for people without private sector jobs or other means of supporting themselves. Public position is a honorable duty, not a job substitute or social assistance.
- If you wonder who is the last fool to believe in a candidate’s outrageous promises chances are you are. If you wonder who is going to foot the bill for them, you can bet you will.
- Beware of hot buttons. Buzzwords indicating action like help, liquidation, drastic reduction, substantial improvement, coupled with emotionally laden words like kids, poor, disabled, retired, sick, security – invariably point to empty sloganeering.
- Be particularly careful with family-, business- and social ties among the candidates and/or links to their businesses. All clans breed corruption and conflict of interest, it’s as simple as that.
- Raise a red flag whenever a candidate has a hard time explaining why does he want to get elected. Chances are the only motivation is material gains or oversized ego.
- A red flag is also in place when a candidate seems eager to improve everything around, but has problems in pointing out what exactly their predecessors in office did right or wrong.
- Be careful with candidates promising monumental investments without substantiating their financing. To get elected everybody is free to promise a new Toyota assembly plant just around a corner.
- If a candidate has failed to reach you, in one form or another, and you know nothing about him, safely assume he doesn’t give a damn about you. Be reciprocal, supporting only those who have expended some effort to reach you with their message.
- Miracles and ideals belong to religions and election campaigns. In real life there are only half-measures and compromises between interest groups. If your candidate hasn’t grasped that yet, give him a chance in another election, not this one.
- With a candidate it’s like with a doctor – first thing don’t break. Making things better takes a back seat. Consider favorably those promising NOTHING in some area. They may be honest. Chances are you’ll be better off with them then with activists who will stick you with a hefty bill for their failed projects.
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