fair enough:) Bird in the hand, does feed you today and keeps you alive. And indeed, makes the hand that feeds very very popular.

But will you still have food in the future? Because popular and smart are not synonyms. Most essential policies aren’t at all popular … so, if I follow your logic, they will simply not get done …. until it is too late. And then you still die…

The problem is, sometimes too late comes without a reverse button. (or the popular president runs out of money to give away — like happens too often in South America) There are a number of huge issues that have been accumulating now for decades ( $90 billion US public + private debt, climate change, end of oil, bacterial anti-biotic resistance, soil, etc) . 2008 subprime mortgage fraud was but one tiny one of them (which by the way, due to lack of vision, still has not been solved).