Campaign promises... Hope or Hoax

Both presidential campaigns this year have made big claims about what America would become under their rule. Both candidates promise to produce change in Washington and to throw out pork-barrel spending in Congress. However both offer different views on how they would lead America into the coming years. McCain promises to continue America's focus on foreign interests and has until recently supported lower levels of regulation on companies. Obama preaches about broad social programs and ending the war in Iraq.
But whatever the hopes of these candidates are, the recent financial news has shot any hopes of new spending to the ground. A total of $700 billion tax payer dollars are being put toward an asset that no private institution will buy. And while a portion of this investment will be made back eventually, the incoming preident will still be sitting on top of a deficit of over one trillion dollars. This means that the only financialy sensible campaign platform would be to stop spending on as many programs as possible and to raise taxes as much as the taxpayers can endure. Ofcourse there is no way that this strategy would fly in a general election and so the campaigns have been reduced to a hypothetical situation of what they would do if there were any money to do it with.
Is there any way to convince the majority of a country to vote for you based on the platform of offering less social programs and higher taxes?