Winners or Whiners? - Thomas Sowell

If there is one pattern that is emerging from this year's political campaigns, it is that rhetoric beats
reality -- in both parties.

The biggest surprise among the Democrats is Bernie Sanders, and among the Republicans is Donald Trump. Although they are each seeking to be put in charge of the nation's government, does anyone know -- or care -- what their actual track record in government has been?

Trump of course has no track record at all in government. If Sanders has anything to show for his many years in Congress, no one seems to know what it is. But both are great at rhetoric.

Hillary Clinton's biggest selling point is that she has lots of "experience" in government, having been a Senator and a Secretary of State. But what she actually accomplished in those roles gets remarkably little attention.

The foreign policies under Secretary Clinton have led to one disaster after another, whether in the Middle East, in Ukraine, or in North Korea. Where are her successes?

The Republicans began this primary election campaign with a number of candidates who did have track records as governors that could have been examined, debated and critiqued. But Donald Trump's rhetoric and antics got the lion's share of the attention. Governors Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal were gone before most people knew much of anything about their track records.

Partly this was due to the media's obsession with Donald Trump. But the public shares responsibility for the triumph of glitter over substance, because polls repeatedly showed that the public was far more attracted to the glitter.

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