How could it have ever been at 62% in the first place!
Here's how I see the prospects for political figures:
1. GOOD BY INTENTION AND COMPETENCE AND RESULT -- makes promises that one wants, achieves them, and keeps them attractive and desirable. Co0ngratulations on your good fortune.
That is the optimum for any voter... and a high standard to keep.
2. SUSPECT BY INTENTION, GOOD BY COMPETENCE AND RESULT -- makes promises that one may not initially like, but achieves them and convinces one after the fact.
Satisfaction, if not immediate. So the deficit spending pays for itself, or the political order cuts into government spending and deficits with no real harm. The hawkish politician may get a better foundation for peace than some overt pacifist who yields quickly to an aggressive rival in diplomacy. The politician who doesn't exude masculine aggressiveness might end up serving revenge -- cold -- because he can treat the military and the intelligence services well.
Whether a politician fits in the first or second category for a stake-holder depends upon the initial ideology of the stake-holder. Either way the results are good.
3. GOOD INTENTION, EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION, SUSPECT RESULTS -- here the politician gets his way (and the individual position of the stake-holder), but results are questionable. Maybe the program was too expensive for its desired purpose. Here's where one gets serious disappointment. Maybe someone ignored the potential for bad consequences. It's back to the drawing board for the policies -- but at the next election the side with an agenda not yours will control the drawing board.
4. SUSPECT INTENTION, EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION, SUSPECT RESULTS -- This is the "I told you so" position. One gets very much what one does not want, and one either gets fired up or angry. Those on the opposite side in the previous election may have gotten the third result. So the President promises a higher minimum wage and gets it -- but unemployment skyrockets. On the other side, the President might have promised pay cuts to stimulate employment, but consumer spending by people earning less craters and so does the overall economy. It's back to the drawing board after the next electoral chance, and your side gets it.
5. GOOD INTENTION, INEFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION -- Results do not emerge, so it is hard to judge whether the results would be desirable. Results are thus irrelevant. One has an inapt vehicle for the achievement of one's ideals.
6. SUSPECT INTENTION, INEFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION -- See #5. You may be relieved that the fellows you voted against didn't deliver what you disliked anyway.
7. MALIGN INTENT. It is far easier to implement evil than to implement good. Just think of this in the crudest dichotomy: it is easy to kill someone by shooting a victim in the heart and extremely difficult to save someone's life through open-heart surgery. It is easier to do an armed robbery than to establish a successful business. It is far easier to hate pariahs than to elevate pariahs. Good societies obviously insist that people make their living by non-predatory means and give people the chance, whether through laissez-faire policies or through a welfare state. Good societies put the effort into making productive people out of their youth and don't squeeze small business into bankruptcy. Malign intent usually comes with forceful means that entrench power for evil-doers. This is a nightmare, whether the efficient monstrosity of Iraq under Saddam Hussein or the ludicrous rot of the Duvalier family in Haiti. All that can redeem the situation is either utter defeat of the leadership in war or the annihilation of that elite in revolution and retribution.
Those with malign intent do everything possible to destroy their more humane antitheses. Just imagine how long Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King would have lasted in the presence of a Hitler-like or Stalin-like ruler.
