The deal isn’t done until the bill is paid. – Dun & Bradstreet credit and collection slogan

Elections are about marketing — crafting a message and trying to convince enough people that you can deliver that they offer you the job. Governing is about closing the deal — actually accomplishing even some of the things that your message said you would.

The beauty of a market economy is that there is precious little time between marketing and delivering. Millions of people get to decide every day if your product lives up to your marketing. If enough of these deciders put their money where your mouth was, you get to keep your job. If they don’t, you don’t.

In governments in the United States, the time between marketing and delivery – between convincing enough people to give you the job and having to face their judgment about whether or not you delivered and, thus, can keep your job – is generally at least two years.

As a result, the deciders have a lot of time to come to conclusions about the quality of your service, and often they’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for a term or two. But if you don’t deliver, or worse, don’t appear to share some of the deciders’ major concerns, you’re sure to get bounced. Free elections might not be as fast as free markets, but they’re just as conclusive. And, as with markets, therein lies their savage beauty.

In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on a message of hope and change, and a war-weary electorate said, “Give him a try.” In 2012, despite the worst economic collapse in 70 years, they said, “Give him another.”

But in 2016, his message — and, by default, that of his would-be successor — rang hollow. Six years of sputtering “recovery” were driven almost exclusively by Federal Reserve policies that, however well-intended, clearly favored those who already had lots of money. Efforts to withdraw from an increasingly confusing “war on terror” seemed merely to spawn new terrorists, some even within our borders. The predominant expression of hope came from desperate families fleeing genocide in the Middle East and dictatorial kleptocracies in Africa.

At the same time, the message of the not-so-loyal opposition – “We will oppose every action you take, even to the point of shutting down government and refusing to exercise our constitutional responsibilities” – proved equally unappealing.

In such an environment, it really isn’t all that surprising that we have elected a complete outsider as our newest president, a man whose only accomplishment is having turned his name and celebrity into cash flow that has, for decades, outpaced the efforts of disillusioned investors and creditors to keep up. We’ve got a marketing president for a marketing age.

But bemoaning and celebrating election results is fast becoming passé. Soon we’ll be on to governing. And here the question for all is clear: Who will close the deal? Who will imagine, draft, pass and implement policies that will accelerate the rate of solid and widespread economic growth that will demonstrably touch the lives of families in all regions and at all income levels?

In attempting to answer this question, all participants must recognize that the governing process has moved from marketing to production and distribution. And in this transition, the effective currency has changed from claims to facts.

No longer will filling the blogosphere with outrageous assertions spread with viral speed by financially desperate media outlets and “out to make a killing” social media artists win the day. In governing, facts matter. I have or I don’t have: a job, a home, health insurance, a chance to expand my knowledge and skills or start a business.

People all across the country will soon be saying to themselves, “I gave you your job, Mr. President (or Senator, or Representative or Governor, etc., etc.) based on a feeling of desperation, but the only way you’ll keep it will be based on facts. And don’t lecture me on how much worse I would be without your principles. They don’t put food on the table.”

As Kurt Vonnegut would have said, “And so it goes.” As I would say, “Let’s gather the pertinent facts.”

Pending recounts, Maine voters, by very slim margins, have just passed initiatives to allow the recreational use of marijuana, to impose a surcharge on income dedicated to education and to leave laws surrounding gun purchases unchanged. If they do nothing else in January, Maine legislators interested in governing should mandate the compilation and broad circulation of the results of each initiative: facts such as the number of marijuana-impaired driving incidents, specific learning enabled by tax surcharge spending, the number of privately sold guns used in crimes.

The list could go on. The point is that the only way to restore trust in government – not just in elections, but also in governing – is to restore the primacy of empirical facts.

The more we become a nation of people who accept as true only the facts we select, the more we become ungovernable. And, thus, the more critical it becomes that those who would govern us gather, sort, interpret and use facts as the very language of their deliberations.

Consulting economist Charles Lawton, Ph.D., can be contacted at:

cttlaw3@gmail.com

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