Said the calculated risk to the educated guess, let’s evaluate the climate for conditional success. –remembered lines from a four-line poem, circa 1970, title and author beyond recall

Will voters buy promises of conditional success, promises which sound good only if you take unstated assumptions for granted? Time will tell.

1. Bret Kavanaugh will be a great Justice, if he puts people before politics.
2. The Paris Climate Accord was terrible, unless catastrophic climate change is real.
3. Burning coal is good, unless a clean environment is important.
4. America should produce as much oil and gas as possible, unless these resources are exhaustible.
5. Immigration is the root cause of crime, unless this is fake news.
6. The Iran nuclear deal was terrible, unless it slowed Iran’s possible quest for nuclear weapons.
7. Neo-Nazis are good people, but women protesting against abuse are a mob.
8. Tariffs are good for America, unless other countries retaliate.
9. Senators who are Democrats are a scurrilous riff-raff, when compared to God’s chosen ones.
10. Kim is a great guy, unless he is a brutal dictator.
11. Assad’s government is tolerable, unless Syrians continue to suffer, die or flee.
12. The war in Afghanistan is being won, if news from there is fake.
13. President Trump is a brilliant businessman, unless his wealth came from an untaxed inheritance.
14. NAFTA was terrible, but USMCA is great, if only because it has a new name.
15. Everything is much better now, since everything was terrible heretofore.

Are facts irrelevant, can we be happy with only half of the story?

And take the Fifth Amendment if they ask us what we mean.–final line of poem