That sounds pretty much true to me for two reasons:
Elected officials will tend to campaign on positions that they actually believe, because being honest is easier than lying.
The liars tend to care more about holding office than about their personal vision of what policies the government should have. If they lie to get elected, they still have to vote for what their constituents want (on high-salience issues), or else they won’t get re-elected.
I think you underrate the complexity of the decisions that are made when it comes to policy.
Most people also don’t account when they make statements like that, that there’s a field of political science out there. When they try to run the numbers, things aren’t as straightforward as the easy model would suggest.
That sounds pretty much true to me for two reasons:
Elected officials will tend to campaign on positions that they actually believe, because being honest is easier than lying.
The liars tend to care more about holding office than about their personal vision of what policies the government should have. If they lie to get elected, they still have to vote for what their constituents want (on high-salience issues), or else they won’t get re-elected.
I think you underrate the complexity of the decisions that are made when it comes to policy.
Most people also don’t account when they make statements like that, that there’s a field of political science out there. When they try to run the numbers, things aren’t as straightforward as the easy model would suggest.