After my father retired, he became a successful consultant in his field. To advertise his services, he ordered small plastic keychains with his name and contact information and passed them out to everyone he knew. Soon, he received another offer from the promotional company: if he purchased pens in addition to the keychains, he would be entered into a drawing for a Grand Prize: a motorboat. Glossy photos of a sleek cabin cruiser rising on ocean waves accompanied the offer. Dad lived on an island and had always wanted a boat. He ordered the pens.
A few months later, Dad received amazing news: he’d won the Grand Prize! He celebrated by calling my sisters and me immediately, imagining all the places he would take us. We were skeptical. What did Dad know about the company or its track record for such largesse? How could a business selling cheap giveaways afford such an expensive prize? Despite our concerns, Dad couldn’t hide how thrilled he was. When the boat didn’t arrive after several weeks, he was undaunted. “These things take time,” he would say. When the boat didn’t arrive after several months, he remained optimistic. “It’s a seasonal thing, and I can’t use it in winter anyway.” After a year had passed, with repeated calls to the company, a cardboard box arrived in the mail. Inside, Dad found a small blow-up raft, the size kids might use in a pond near shore. Humiliated, he never mentioned “his boat” again.
Dad’s been gone for over twenty years, but lately I’ve been thinking about his boat and how he held onto his vision of boating adventures even as it became clear that the company’s promise was a scam. I’ve been thinking about scams generally, and why we fall for them. Dad defended a company he knew little about because it promised something he really wanted, and who would deny a promise? He withstood his family’s doubt and ridicule with calm defiance because he trusted the deal he had made, and who were we to know better? He held onto his trust through a year of red flags, enduring the unease with stoic assurance. Until the truth lay plain as day before his eyes.
Mark Twain once said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” For Dad, convincing took a painful and undeniably real betrayal: a raft when he was promised a cabin cruiser. To me, it’s impossible not to see parallels in today’s political climate, where the disparity between what the U.S. president has promised the American people and what he has delivered deepens by the hour. Millions of Americans still hold to his promise that he will “fix everything.” What will it take, I wonder, to convince them that our president does not make good on his promises? And how blunt and obvious will the evidence of betrayal have to be?
The president promised to improve the cost of living on “day one” by ending inflation and reducing the price of gas and groceries. Instead, living costs remain high, with no end in sight.
He also promised to improve the economy and usher in a time of renewed prosperity. Instead, job numbers are down, unemployment is rising, and the overall economy is faltering under the uncertainty of his chaotic trade policies. While now admitting that he has little control over forces that push many Americans to the financial edge, he finds countless ways for his own businesses to profit, enhancing his net worth by billions.
Also on “day one,” the president promised to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Instead, the conflict in Gaza has grown to a full-blown humanitarian nightmare that many consider a genocide. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has grown more brutal and intense in the aftermath of the “peace summit” in Alaska. Rather than bowing to the president’s power and influence, foreign warmongers effectively ignore him.
The president promised to crack down on illegal immigration by deporting migrants with criminal records. Instead, he’s targeted all undocumented immigrants, even those who’ve lived here for decades as law-abiding members of their communities. His thuggish enforcement tactics have violated basic human rights and denied due process to non-citizens and citizens alike.
The president promised to make America healthier again. Instead, he’s placed vital decisions about our medical care in the hands of a man determined to destroy the vaccines that have long kept us safe from infectious diseases. He’s gutted the research institutions and labs that make breakthroughs in the treatment of other life-threatening illnesses, like cancer. And he’s celebrated a Big Beautiful Bill that will deprive millions of health care coverage.
The president promised to bring peace to our communities and protect us from crime. Instead, he’s created unrest across the country by ordering the U.S. military into our cities against the will of local authorities. And he’s turned the FBI and Department of Justice into agencies for his personal vengeance, shifting their attention and resources away from investigating real crimes to pursuing the imagined crimes of his opponents.
Most notably, the president promised to Make America Great Again, which a reasonable citizen could believe meant upholding faith in our Constitution and the ideals of democracy that made America great in the first place. Instead, he’s trying to consolidate as much power as possible in himself, creating an authoritarian regime where the only rules that matter are his own.
The list of broken or forgotten promises goes on and on and on.
Many Americans may still wait patiently for the peace, prosperity, good health and international respect our president has promised. Their patience is no doubt aided by the daily stream of distortion and disinformation from his administration, which has fired anyone with the integrity to tell the truth. But the president’s sinking approval ratings on every major issue facing our country — inflation and prices, jobs and the economy, civil rights, national security, and immigration — show that many Americans are beginning to find his promises ringing hollow.
The president can distract and deflect, bully and attack, bluster and fume. But many who were once willing to give him their trust are opening their eyes to the stark difference between what he’s promised and what they see in front of them. Instead of a country thriving, they see a country in turmoil. The damage is beginning to land — undeniably — on their doorsteps. And they’re realizing, like my Dad, that they’ve been had.
Barbara Hood is a retired attorney and businesswoman who lives in Anchorage.