The Clinton/Trump Conundrum
By P.J. O'Rourke
Voting is a kind of investment...
You're buying into a government. And a government costs money. But you're trusting that this government will pay dividends in the form of national security, rule of law, and various sensible policies. You're even hoping that your stake in government will appreciate – by making America a better country.
But big differences distinguish the political market from financial markets.
You can't get out of the political market. You can't go to cash. You can't go to gold. You can't wait for the "fat pitch."
Politics will be throwing things at your head no matter what.
And unlike real markets, political markets offer limited choices. It's as if you're an investor and some massive bully has you in a headlock saying, "Put your money in Peabody Energy or Valeant."
You say, "Isn't there something else I could do?"
Politics says, "No."
This year, we're faced with two bad choices.
Hillary is wrong about everything. She is to politics what the Inquisition was to Galileo. She thinks the sun revolves around her.
But Trump Earth™ is flat. We might sail over the edge. Here be monsters.
A Hillary presidency means four more years of the Obama administration... or worse, given her record of political cunning, deception, and guile.
Anyway, we'll be traveling down the same path.
The deficit will test how many zeros there are in arithmetic.
Principal and interest on the national debt will pile up as if the whole nation had taken out a $19 trillion payday loan.
The economy will continue to be a stagnant pond, scummy and stinking and breeding only a small swarm of jobs and business opportunities the size of gnats and mosquitoes.
The Federal Reserve will go on playing with Monopoly money like kids who've lost the Parker Brothers board-game rules.
The giant squid of federal regulation will thrive and grow, its suckers grasping all aspects of free enterprise and its tentacles poking into every orifice of private life.
And entitlement programs will expand until everyone is entitled to everything. Obamacare will cover your pets when they have fleas and your houseplants when they need watering. The poverty threshold will be raised until Mitt Romney qualifies for food stamps.
On the other hand, we have Trump. Which means we don't know what we have.
Trump's policy positions seem to be chosen by covering Trump Towers with ideas written on Post-it notes while he throws darts at them with his eyes closed.
When I do know where Trump stands, I wish he wouldn't stand there.
I'm disturbed by his protectionism. The international economy has climbed out the window and is teetering on the ledge. Trump makes a good point about the U.S. loss of manufacturing jobs. But he's making his point by standing on the sidewalk yelling, "Jump!"
Trump is supposed to be a good businessman. But he's acting like Bernie Madoff when he tries to sell us on the Medicare and Social Security Ponzi schemes.
We don't need more useless federal spending to build a wall on our border. What we need is to fire everyone in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The mission of this government agency is, as far as I can tell, to keep all the best and hardest-working immigrants out of America, while making sure the worst sneak in and get to stay.
I'm glad to see Trump attack the political-correctness brat pack. They're idiots. But Trump replaces idiocy with vulgarity. When kids say something stupid, you don't wash their mouths out with #%@*.
And Trump's populism smacks too much of the angry mob for me. Mobs are notoriously unpredictable. And so far, the style of presidency that Trump promises sounds like mob rule by a one-man mob.
I said we're faced with two bad choices. Actually, we have three. We can cast no vote at all.
I've been known to advocate it. I titled one of my books, Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards.
Stansberry Research founder Porter Stansberry is eloquent on the pointlessness of political involvement. As individual citizens, our degree of control over the political process is statistically insignificant. Elections are a "random walk." We have better things to do with our lives than play politics. And, when it comes to political donations, we certainly have better things to do with our money.
Stuffing our money down the kitchen InSinkErator would be better, as far as I'm concerned.
But this year's presidential campaign has been breaking all the rules, including my rule of "Don't Get Involved."
And against all odds... I think a Hillary presidency would be better for the markets. (I would have bet $1 million six months ago that I'd never write those words.)
Why? More than anything, markets hate uncertainty... and if nothing else, a Hillary presidency would be predictable.
Things will be lousy under Hillary, but the lousiness will be familiar. We've had eight years of it and we know how to cope. For me, the 2008 election of Obama and a Democratic Congress was like the first time my children got head lice. Shock! Horror! The election of Hillary will be like the third time my children got head lice. Oh, darn it, boil the sheets and pillowcases, buy the smelly shampoo, and get out the magnifying glass and tweezers.
Things will be surprising under Trump. In a world where the field of foreign policy is planted with land mines, economic trends are a riddle wrapped in a mystery, and domestic social antagonisms are a lit fuse leading who knows where...
In investment terms, we've already discounted Hillary. The Volatility Index ("VIX") on Trump is too high.
Would a Trump presidency have upside potential? Definitely. Trump is a much-needed shock-therapy treatment for a deeply depressed Republican Party. (That is, Republican voters are depressed. Republican leaders are suffering from something else – hearing problems. They're deaf to their constituents, and are all ears to special interests.)
However, a Hillary presidency would have an upside, too. I've seen the GOP die and be buried before – with Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Watergate. All it took was four short years, and it was Morning in America.
I've got my fingers crossed. I'm hoping Hillary is Jimmy Carter in a pantsuit.
Regards,
P.J. O'Rourke