The Cookie Jar Candidate

"America First ... and devil take the hindmost."

   Competitiveness in sports is a valuable trait, and competition in business can benefit consumers by ensuring wider choice and lower prices. Taken to an extreme, however, when the goal is solely to win, to defeat the other guy regardless of cost, both sides lose.
   When that happens, the supposed winner, no matter his boasting, is really a loser. Financially, he may have gained, but he did so by reducing his competitors to beggary, as well as bankrupting contractors and impoverishing customers.
   In the end, what's the point of taking in all the money if there is no one left to buy your product?
   Ironically, that can be an advantage to a businessman-turned politician, because he can then blame others for the problems that he himself created. Assuming people believe him.
   Sound familiar?

   Call him the Cookie Jar Candidate. When a child is caught with his hand in the cookie jar, taking something when he was not entitled to it, the childish defense is to blame someone else for leaving the cookie jar unguarded.
   When the cookie culprit grows up (physically, if not emotionally), the practice of faulting others has become habit. He is never wrong, about anything, in any detail, and the responsibility for any problems resulting from misappropriated cookies -- or failed business ventures -- is always passed on to others.
   Meanwhile, the goal of the Inner Cookie Culprit is always "Me first," and to defeat any and all challengers by whatever means it takes. And when those means cause pain to others and the Cookie Man is called out on his behavior, he may express "regret."
   That's not an apology, or a way of saying, "I'm sorry." His only regret is being caught with his hand in the Cookie Jar.