Laffer Associates Game On [Updated 7/6/2016] In fact the entire political terrain of the U.S. has shifted 180 degrees in the past 8 years with one exception—the White House. A betting person with any lick of sense would be loath to bet against a Republican presidency and a radical reversal of economic policies. VIL._Issues and Political History Another factor favoring Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton has to do with longevity and negative selection. The political process, more than any system I’ve ever worked with, thrives on pointing out mistakes and overlooking successes. My advice to many candidates has been to speak as little as possible and to describe policies in as general a manner as you can get away with. People aren’t looking through your transcripts to find the next wonderful and positive thing you’ve done, but instead they try to find your missteps, transgressions, faux pas and failures. Politics is a totally negative process. You live or die by the sum total of what you’ve done wrong, not on the balance between what you’ve done right and what you’ve done wrong. In the words of Shakespeare, “the good is oft interred with their bones.”6 Trump has had very limited exposure as a practicing politician and, therefore, has only his own words and phrases to criticize. While he may have a number of missteps in business or in his personal life, no one cares. And yet, he truly enjoys celebrity status as no one in politics today does. Also, given how much Trump has said about any number of issues over the past couple of years, there are probably quotes that can be used on any side of most any issue. But with Hillary, it’s different. Hillary has done a lot. She’s been involved in politics at a visible level since the Watergate hearings and maybe even earlier. Her past contains numerous misdeeds and failures as much because she’s done so much and perhaps not so much because she has been a failure. Yet, a diligent, hard-driving researcher can find a laundry list o