Fixing A Mistake

 

Many investors have had the experience of buying the stock of a failing company and seeing the price decline.  Such mistakes are common. The thing to do after making one is to acknowledge one was wrong,  cut one’s losses,  try to learn from the experience, and move on instead of riding the loser all the way into the ground.  The same thing can apply in other areas of life.

Republican voters  made a bad mistake in 2016 during their presidential primaries. The party was in a good position for success. Many Americans wanted a change after Obama’s administration, and the Democrats were nominating an especially unpopular and unlikeable candidate in Hillary Clinton.  Besides Donald Trump there were sixteen or so others seeking the nomination of the Republicans.  An easy half dozen of them  – say Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, Bush, Walker, and Perry – had resumes  and qualifications typical of  successful candidates for president.  All of them were better qualified than Donald Trump in terms of knowledge, experience, and temperament.  (Carly Fiorina, for example, had the same amount of experience in government as Trump, none, but was far better informed, more thoughtful, and more decently behaved than he was. The same goes for Ben Carson.  Trump was not even the only outsider for whom disgruntled Republicans could have voted.)

Yet the voters chose Trump.  Now they and their party are stuck with him and the results.  Republicans got hammered in the midterm elections of 2018, and are at risk of losing the senate this year. In Joe Biden the Democrats have nominated a dull, uninspiring, political careerist who has not campaigned much,  who gives the appearance of having lost at least a step or  two mentally,  and who seems on his way to trouncing an incumbent president  in next week’s election. That should tell Republicans something. They need to recognize they made a mistake, accept the consequences, and try not to repeat  it.  In the next few days they should focus on holding the senate and let what happens to Trump happen.

Then, assuming Biden wins, they should  rebuild as a party of limited government, free international trade, lower spending and deficits, less rule by bureaucrats and regulations, freedom of expression, strong national defense and alliances, economic progress,  limits on executive power, and social tolerance and respect.  They should reject Trump and his brand  and style of ignorant, ultra-nationalist, xenophobic, yahoo  populism.   If so they should have a good opportunity in 2022. The Dems are likely to overplay their hands once they get in power, and the economic and social consequences of the epidemic are unlikely to be done  by then.