[somozasayre]

No candidate for president (or any other national office, for that matter) can currently follow through on promises of job creation.

It's easy to explain why: The only policy prescription that will definitely create jobs is the federal government hiring people, directly or indirectly, to produce stuff that will help everybody. No politician is capable of getting either a vote in favor of deficit spending or raising taxes in order to pay for such a program. Therefore, no politician can get the federal government to hire anybody.

The only way to convince the private sector to create serious jobs in the US is if manufacturing in the US becomes more attractive to utterly callous businesses than manufacturing in Third-World countries. That means either tariffs which would get the US in serious trouble with the WTO, or gutting all environmental and labor laws so that corporations could pay people pennies an hour, dump toxic chemicals near their home for their trouble, employ their children when families couldn't manage on the income of the parents. and fire and replace them when they get hurt or sick on the job, get pregnant, or complain.

Another way of thinking about it: The Republicans put forward their vision of the future as the 1950's and Leave it to Beaver. But their real vision of the future resembles much more the 1890's and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.