Just how many times have you seen a world leader being criticized for following up with his public promises. While larger sections of media may label the President of The United States as a moron he is far from it.
The reasons for calling him a moron include his efforts to build a border wall, for putting trade barriers with China, decisions related to continued exploitation of environment and for rudimentary efforts to revive economy of rust belt.
Each one of these were his election promise, and their implementation has still surprised much of the world. In the democratic world electoral promises are divorced from delivery. Obama failed his promise of change, Guantanamo is still functional, Arabs hated US more and Afghanistan was still an American war zone.
Broken promises are in fact are much more common than they are not. From Angela Merkel to Theresa May – almost all democratically elected leaders start compromising on their promises to the electorate from the day they assume power. The lack of accountability is so common that when Trump actually keeps his promises, there is a surprise.
However, in the world of Tweets and posts, accountability or the lack of it finds a direct resonance with the voters. They are much likely to forgive personal indiscretion of its leadership as long as the they do their jobs.
A word of caution here. While we may have painted ‘promise keeper’ Trump in good light, certain facts are lost in this new style of decision making. Public at large has much restricted access to data as compared to those who have assumed office. Further Governments indulge in dirty deeds all the time. Unless they can bring about a new culture of transparency, voters will always set wrong expectations and their ‘promise keepr’ will, by extension, deliver wrong policy.
In trump we may well have a game changer, for the betterment of the whole world.
