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One may decide to ask what the real incentive with which a person can be determined to vote for one presidential candidate or another is. Is it the U.S. foreign policy, including here the intervention in Iraq, is it national and individual security, or is it economic policy and welfare? According to the Stanford University Research Lab, there are two main issues that interest the U.S. citizen: terrorism-defense and economy. In this sense, it is easy to understand why former President Clinton has given John Kerry two major advices: "1. Focus on the economy. 2. Elections are about the future not the past."
It is no wonder this was coming from Bill Clinton since, in spite of the turmoil in his private life and some questions regarding his individual morality, he was successfully elected for two consecutive mandates simply because he carried the Americans through the most prosperous economic period in the history of the U.S., with an economic growth hardly to be matched in the following years.
As such, we may understand that one of the most important voting incentives relates to economic issues and to ways in which the president can promulgate and sustain policies by which he will be able to increase overall level of welfare for a large number of citizens. The role of the economy, from an electoral point-of-view and not only, is to best provide for its people. Indeed, we are expecting the coming president to represent the larger mass of citizens, people who will benefit from health care and educational policies, among others.
This does not need to be regarded as a populist approach, but rather from a marketing perspective. If we consider the marketing objective of satisfying the customers, then the citizens of the United States are the customers that need to be satisfied with the economic policies, governmental projects and spending. This can only be done if we include a large category of consumers/citizens...
One would mean governmental intervention in the economy, to the extent to which it may correct the macroeconomic deficiencies that are due to appear in any economy. A simple example in this sense is the control of the interest rate. Indeed, the period of recession following the attacks on the 11th of September brought about an economic recession characterized by a lower economic growth, decreasing demand and individual spending, etc. In this sense, lowering the
interest rates would have influenced the individuals to turn to
investment instead of saving, giving the low rate return for bank deposits. The second approach lets macroeconomic deficiencies regulate through their own invisible hand mechanism.
However, there is also an additional way that the state and the government can
play on the economic stage, through
public and governmental spending and state-financed projects. This generally happens in areas of social concern, where it is believed that state intervention can best adjust income disparities and ensure that everybody has a fair chance.
Examples in this sense are public projects in health care,
social security or
education. The problem with such projects, and in general, with governmental spending, is that these projects tend to create rather large budget deficits, because of high costs, and this is one of the things that John Kerry is accusing George W. Bush of: a high budget deficit created during his presidency, a deficit which is deemed to bring more problems for the U.S. than the spending has done so far.
A democratically election will be an election where people vote for the person that most represents their interests. As we have seen previously, there are two primary causes for concern among the American public: individual security and individual prosperity, translated as the
terrorist threat and economy. Both presidential candidates are relying on measures and policies in these two areas in order to win on their side the undecided part of the
population.
Additionally, a democratic election is not only about Election Day, when everything is…
