I began writing this blog several weeks before the last election thinking that perhaps I could help clarify some considerations I had been hearing from a few of my friends. I found the noise and confusion leading up to the election distracted me from finishing the blog, and afterward my politic will seemed to have drained away. I am finally getting interested in the topic again, so am going to give it another try.

I had been noticing that the MAGA crowd were bringing up the question of policy differences between the two presidential candidates. I keep running into Trump supporters who say things like, “I can’t stand Trump personally, but his policies are what are important.” I have begun to wonder just what that means, and whether the people who say that have any clue about his actual policies.

I wonder just what they mean when they use the term “policy” in this context. Wikipedia includes a statement that; “A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol.” My copy of Webster’s dictionary includes the following definition; “A (policy is a) high-level overall plan embracing the general goals and acceptable procedures esp. of a governmental body.”

I think both of these get to the core of what is meant by a Presidential candidate talking about their proposed “policies” behind their promised actions. A policy in this context includes goals (intent) as well as something about acceptable procedures for achieving those goals. A policy isn’t just a set of actions that will be taken, rather it is a description of the goals or intent along with the procedures that will be used to implement those goals.

An interesting “policy” statement for the Presidential election might be grounded in one contained in the Constitution. Namely, ” We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” There it is in a nutshell, the statement identifies the goals and the procedures for meeting those goals and contained in the body of the Constitution (including the Amendments).

Given this meaning for the term “policy,” I wonder what Trump’s policies might be. He discusses a lot of procedures such as expel all of the undocumented people from the Country, but he doesn’t clarify why he might want to do that. What is the goal or intent? I can think of a number of possible answers, but haven’t heard which are driving the procedures. For example, perhaps the goal is to reduce the overall population of Country by getting rid of the “extra” people. Perhaps it has to do with prejudice against a particular race, nationality or origin. Perhaps it is because they depress wages by working for less that citizens are willing to work for. Perhaps it is because they drain the economy of the country by unfairly using limited resources. These might all be supportable reasons (except for the prejudice idea), but if so it would be more useful to state the goal/intent so that it is possible to consider whether or not the proposed solution works or if there might be better solutions.

Another example that might be worth considering has to do with overturning Roe v. Wade. Why was that done? Once again, I can think of a number of reasons – but they haven’t been stated in ways that I find compelling (or even believable). It might be a moral issue of some sort, perhaps a moral issue about killing unborn “children” (even at the risk of killing the mother). That sounds really forceful and is hard to muster an effective challenge to, but it is really the reason or is it just a powerfully sounding argument? During my long drive through the southern part of the USA I heard that the moral issue isn’t really the reason. I was told that the real reason is most abortions and other types of fertility control measures are used by white people, therefore reducing the number of white births – allowing the population of non-whites to grow faster than the white population. Soon whites will be the minority, and this is not tolerable. Those who told me that said they use the moral argument because it sounds good, but they are actually worried that the Country will be overrun and ruled by non-white people. I was told that is why they don’t take into consideration the resulting deaths and bad outcomes that were common from botched amateur abortions before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion.

I am aware of many of Trump’s proposed solutions, but don’t know much about why he is proposing them (what his policies are). Examples include;

• Make abortions difficult, expensive and time consuming
• Remove all “illegal” people from the country
• Eliminate taxes on tips
• Impose huge import tariffs
• Replace experienced professionals from government posts, replacing them with unqualified “yes men”
• Reduce taxes on the rich
• Eliminate the Affordable Care Act
• Reduce or eliminate Social Security benefits
• Complete the boarder wall
• End birthright citizenship
• Ban U.S. companies from investing in Chinese companies, and ban Chinese companies from investing in U.S. companies.
• End taxation on overtime
• Reduce corporate tax rates
• Cut car insurance rates by 50%
• Withdraw from the World Health Organization
• Abolish the educational department
• Provide $10,000 a year to home schoolers
• Create a new credentialing body for teachers
• Abolish teacher tenure for k-12
• Enable prayer and other activities in public schools
• Stop funding colleges that engage in censorship (as defined by Trump)
• Pardon participants in storming the Capitol January 6th
• Create a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden
• Impose death penalty for selling drugs
• Encourage stop-and-frisk policing
• Require proof of citizenship at polls
• Require only paper ballets
• Required all votes to be counted on election night
• Cut off federal funding for NPR
• Pull out of Paris Climate Accord
• Prevent further development of off-shore wind development
• Lower energy costs by 50% within first year
• Promote research and development of vertical takeoff flying cars

There are many, many other things that Trump has promised to do, but these are things to do – they are not policies. For example, take his promise to lower energy costs by 50%. How might that happen and why? What policy is he implementing? Would this mean that it is now the policy that the Federal government to manage and force the petroleum industry to cut prices at their loss, or does this mean that it is now the policy of the government to subsidize gas prices in order to maximize the burning of petroleum? Is this a call for the Federal Government to take over (nationalize) the petroleum industry so the government can control prices? Is he trying to funnel tax money to the petroleum industry by decreasing gas prices thereby increase gas use? What policy could possible be driving this sort of action, and how might that be implemented? What problem is he trying to solve?

What he seems to be doing is agreeing to the “wish lists” from his “base” so he can get into power and have sufficient control to turn the Country into something like a dictatorship. His base wants lower prices, higher income, lower taxes, less competition with “those” other people and a chicken in every pot. He has articulated very few actual policies, just a bunch of rather odd and disjointed action plans.

Harris hasn’t done a much better job at articulating her “policies”, but she did describe numerous policies (goals/intents) along the lines of improving access to affordable health care, working toward reducing the global warming risks, protecting labor, improving public education, restore access to family planning, ban corporate price gouging on critical items such as food and groceries, roll back tax cuts on wealth, increase capital gains taxes on high income people, sign the bipartisan border security act, require Supreme Court Justices to comply with ethics laws, etc, etc.

I got tired listing all of the promised actions from both. What I am trying to point out is that Trump doesn’t seem to have much of a policy beyond gaining power and enriching the rich. Harris also didn’t specifically state her policies, but I can easily make the connection between each one of her promises and the higher policy statement contained in the opening line of the US Constitution. While she didn’t make a clear and specific link to the Constitution, it is easy to do so. Many, perhaps most, of Trump’s promises don’t seem to be aimed at implementing the highest level policies of the United States. His policies seem to be personal rather than in support of “we the people.”