The Presidency and the Economy

June 6, 2008
by Evans Munyemesha

The theory of 'Survival of the fittest' is apparently inapplicable to the presidency for this institution seems to thrive on the theory of 'Survival of the basest character.' This is deducible from the fact that while a reasonable person in any society ought in all his actions to aim primarily at his own interests, yet the presidency overturns this well-established principle, promising to meet the infinite interests of several million people -- even at the oddest hours of the night by staying close to the phone waiting for that fabled call.

The presidency, being the single most important institution in a democracy and whose sole object is ostensibly to help people achieve their just interests mostly by restraining others who might be an hindrance or a threat to doing so, seems to attract persons who are morally bankrupt.

It seems too to be a common trait among the voting public that placing blind confidence in the presidency and in the presidential candidates who together claim indirectly to be in possession of extraordinary powers with which to serve certain ends such as prescribing remedies to all economic diseases is a virtue.

For instance, the voting public is so confident that the current economic problems in the country ought not to be solved by practical economists but by the president and other politicians who are mostly former lawyers with no or little background in economics. How boundlessly ignorant and gullible could the voting public be!

The other common trait among the voting public is that of desiring to be made whole or to be validated by some external agent in the shape of a public servant; or that of compelling others to conform to some political creed however outlandish. Illustrative of this is the current clamor by the public to have a solution to healthcare by appealing to the presidential candidates none of whom has any background in the healthcare industry.

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If the presidency is the object most important to the people, if it not only extends the peoples' interests (as the claim goes) but also intrudes into their everyday life, nothing can demand from the people a more serious analysis. Yet, the presidency, of all things, the people exercise the most implicit credulity.

The same people who examine with scrupulous nicety things of little moment to their welfare wholly neglect examination concerning the motives which determine for them to believe and perform things, on which, according to their own confession, depend both their social progress and life.

They blindly abandon themselves to that which superstitious philosophy and chance have given them for a guide.

Far from contenting themselves with the fictions associated with the presidency and what its agents purport they could do; far from entertaining the capricious and arbitrary decisions of the presidency, which perpetuates itself by pretending to be founded on firm and higher principle, their initial question surely should be: "How could we know that the presidency is competent to direct the economy (assuming that the economy needs directing by some single institution)?

In order to be capable of judging of competency, the people must have a just idea of the presidency's supremacy in matters economic. A critical analysis of the details about the presidency in relation to the economy is to become the proof of presidential competency. Their conclusions should decide in its favor. To prove the validity of its competency, eyes must be fixed on its superiorqualities by which it merits the preference for undertaking the economic tasks it has assigned to itself.

And, still, it must come off as better than any other institution, making people better off wherever it spreads its wings.