If campaign promises made by politicians were subject to the same rules and scrutiny as professional advertisements, they would be seriously in trouble. Fortunately for them, citizens are the ones who determine whether claims are accurate and, if they are, how much the voters care about it.
And in governments, voters are aware that they have a chance to punish politicians who disobey their own laws in the coming elections. To that extent, voters are in a stronger position than customers – although customers, at least, can change suppliers next time if they do n’t like what they have bought.
This summer, Japan and the United States are making an intriguing contrast between the effects of politicians ‘ promises:
- Due to the low open appeal ratings of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who has chosen not to work for re-election as leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, which can be attributable to his broken financial guarantees.
- And Kamala Harris is running against Donald Trump by making economic policy promises that she must know she ca n’t possibly fulfill, presumably because she believes she wo n’t be punished for them.
It’s unlikely that a sizable portion of Chinese citizens, who were 1o5.3 million at the time of the last common election in 2021, were interested in Kishida’s pledge to” make a new form of socialism” in Japan. His assurance was very abstract to appeal to regular people.
There is no denying that when he used this phrase a month earlier to win the LDP leadership, it had had a significant impact on how he was perceived by the roughly 1 % of voters who are LDP people.
In contrast to his more traditional political successors, Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga, who could be seen as an entrepreneur in terms of local monetary policy, this phrase gave him the impression that he was more politically liberal. Because of his more left-winging position on monetary affairs, he may appear to be a candidate for change in keeping with Abe and Suga in terms of foreign and security policy.
In contrast to the typical primary minister of recent years, Kishida’s three years in office seem like a long time. But, by comparison with Abe’s nearly eight years from December 2012 until September 2020, Kishida’s word counts as little. Additionally, he should have had a great chance of remaining prime minister for another three years given that the LDP currently has no obvious or capable candidate to succeed him.
His small people approval ratings, which are frequently blamed on the economic crises that have plagued the LDP, are usually attributable to the fact that he chose to resign. For crises, but, should change the group more than Kishida himself, as he has not been physically tainted.
It is more likely that his low popularity is a result of economic factors, most importantly the fact that ordinary people’s incomes have increased more quietly than prices during his presidency, making them feel continuously worse off.
It is not really Kishida’s fault that prices started to rise. Instead, his vital error may have been that he did not stop talking about” a new form of neoliberalism” once he had been elected group leader. He established committees and demanded reports on how to carry out the assurance, keeping the phrase in the headlines. Whatever the boards ‘ responses, Kishida proved unwilling to put them into practice.
And what the general public notices is that “new capitalism” results from wages being outpaced by prices, and that outside travel is harder to come by due to the yen exchange rate’s decline.
If Trump were to lose to her in the election, Harris should learn that monetary promises can help people get elected but they should be dropped if they are unconstitutional or, worse, they could be dangerous.
Harris has pledged to take action to stop what she refers to as “price-gouging,” which means financial locations that cause prices by making excessive profits. Additionally, she has pledged to increase the revenue on business profits as well.
The first of those ideas is meaningless in an open, free-market world like America: there is no possibility that new laws or enforcement mechanisms was, in practice, identify and punish extra profits.
The second could only be carried out with Congress’s assent, which is unlikely to happen unless the Democrats win an unexpectedly large success in both houses.
The purpose of Harris ‘ claims, as well as Trump’s pledge to impose taxes on all imported manufactured goods, and his new commitment to establish an “efficiency fee” led by a multi-billionaire, Elon Musk, presumably to lower the overall price stage, which the tariffs would undoubtedly raise, may be for the candidates to position themselves in a way that they hope will win over voters:
- as a friend of working individuals, in Harris’s situation,
- as an army of manipulative foreigners, in Trump’s circumstance, for taxes, but also as a foe friend of working people.
The promise must be that both learn the lesson of Kishida: Make irrelevant, impossible promises if you must, but do not maintain shouting about them– or worse, trying to implement them – once you are in business. To do so could be dangerous.
Originally editor-in-chief of The Economist, where he had formerly served as Tokyo commission chief, Bill Emmott is currently president of the , Japan Society of the UK, the , International Institute for Strategic Studies , and the , International Trade Institute.
This article’s original Japanese language was published by Nikkei Business. The content was first published in English on Bill Emmott’s Global View, a substack. Asia Times is republishing with authority.