Presidential campaign promises this year have gotten so unrealistic that there’s no way John McCain, Barack Obama or even Jesus Christ — who, last I heard, is not running this time around — could deliver on all of them. Or even on a reasonable percentage of them. Much though we’d like to believe the right leader could solve our health care crisis, find decent jobs for all working-class Americans, cut everyone’s taxes, and provide plenty of affordable housing while halting real estate price declines, an awful lot of the problems that plague our country cannot be solved by the President.

Take our national debt situation, for example. We owe one hell of a lot of money to foreign companies and governments. No matter how often our next President reminds us that most of this debt problem was caused by George W. Bush, it is still something that must be taken care of. Somehow.

The two most tried-and-true methods of getting rid of high government debts are coups and inflation. After a coup, the new regime declares that it was the old regime (the dictator and his or her cronies) that borrowed all that money, so the new government is not responsible for it and will not pay it back. The second method — inflation — is the one most popularly-elected governments choose. The new government may talk at length about “keeping our currency strong in the world market,” but somehow, despite the jawboning, the country’s currency is worth a little less each day.

Heck, we don’t even need to wait for a new president to devalue our currency. It’s already happening, as anyone who has traveled beyond U.S. borders lately can tell you. Outside the U.S. the dollar is worth a lot less than it was a few years ago, which means even the most prosperous U.S. travelers feel poor when they’re in Paris or Jerusalem. And imports… all those Dollar Stores that sell cheap Chinese stuff will probably be Two Dollar Stores before long. Today’s (imported) $600 laptop computers may cost $1000 or more in a few years. And gas prices could hit $4. Oh, wait! Gas prices have already hit $4, and even if they ease a little for a while, if each dollar keeps buying less, gas prices will go back up, possibly to $5 per gallon or more. And no, more oil drilling in the U.S. won’t make a lot of difference, no matter what your favorite Presidential candidate says.

The big upside to dollar devaluation — aside from paying off our debts with inflation-discounted dollars — is that rising prices on imports may mean that offshoring production and service work will become less appealing to our corporate masters than it is today. Add higher shipping and travel costs to the equation, and suddenly those $15 per hour furniture factory workers in N. Carolina look like a pretty good deal compared to their Chinese or Vietnamese competition. Ditto programmers and help desk people in Iowa compared to their counterparts in Manilla or New Delhi. No, Wal~Mart will probably not go back to their old policy of selling nothing but American-made goods anytime soon, but we might see at least a few items there made by workers right here in the good old U.S.A. — who pay taxes here and buy food here and generally help our economy instead of someone else’s.

There’s also the fact that, right now, our entire country is essentially on sale when looked at through foreign eyes. We might as well put up giant “America! 40% Off!” signs at all border crossings. Disney World recently raised its admisison price to the point where — when you include driving there at today’s gas prices or flying there at ever-higher prices in ever-more-overcrowded, aging aluminum tubes manned and womanned by low-morale flight crews who are barely hanging onto their jobs, let alone getting raises big enough to counteract inflation — a Disney World trip is no longer affordable for most American families. But Disney doesn’t care about any of that. Its new target market is Europe. $200 a night for a hotel room in Orlando may seem outrageous to Americans, but it looks like a great deal to German travelers who pay in Euros, not dollars.

U.S. residention real estate, too, is on sale. Around my part of Florida (Sarasota/Bradenton) the great hope for Realtors isn’t American buyers — most of whom can’t get financing now, anyway — but foreigners, who seem to think a $300,000 me-too tract house is a bargain, not a ripoff.

Commercial property…. businesses…. we’re selling them all for 40% off, too, and if our currency keeps dropping on world markets, the discounts will be even greater. 50%? 60%? Who knows? Today a foreign company buys Budweiser. Tomorrow a foreign company could buy Bank of America. Or, here in Florida, buy or lease our roads and rightaways from our state government and charge tolls for us to drive on them. (Sadly, this is not a joke; our Republicans here really are considering this kind of deal.)

Meanwhile, in the White House, our new President will spend a lot of time popping aspirin and wondering what to do about all of this in between worrying about Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and nukes in Iran and North Korea and all kinds of other problems, including what terrorist hotspots might pop up next, not to mention more Americans going nuts as their personal finances fall apart and taking what we might call “Second Amendment Action” against bankers and health insurance executives or even just against the nearest liberals, who all right-thinking conspiracy nuts blame for all of our country’s problems — and their personal ones, too.

“Change We Can Believe In” sounds great, but I don’t think Barack Obama can possibly change enough in four years to satisfy a majority of voters in 2012. McCain’s current slogan seems to be “Country First.” I don’t know exactly what this is supposed to mean, but if the Republican definition of “Our Country” keeps on excluding anyone who works hard for a living (or is disabled or retired), four years of McCain would leave 90% of us even worse off than four years of Obama.

Enter Hillary Clinton.

Remember her?

I’ve personally had enough of Clintons (and Bushes) in government to last me the rest of my life (and beyond), but I suspect that Hillary Clinton has a damn fine chance to become President in the 2012 election. If McCain is elected in 2008, I think she’ll be a shoe-in. If Obama is elected in 2008, we may see a bloody Democratic primary in 2012 that will leave the Democrats as divided and miserable in 2012 as the Republicans are now, but despite all that Hillary Clinton could still easily end up in the White House.

Or maybe someone else will come along and capture the public’s imagination between now and then. Hardly anyone outside of Illinois had heard of Barack Obama before 2006. But whether Hillary Clinton or someone else becomes the leading opposition candidate in 2012, I do not expect either McCain or Obama to last more than a single term. They are both good men, but it would take a President with more superpowers than a dozen Marvel characters to fix more than a few of our country’s problems before the 2012 Presidential election.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 11:18 am and is filed under Politics, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.