At the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Donald Trump offered American adults a striking proposition: a $5,000 'dividend' should the GOP prevail in the upcoming elections. The promise, vast in scale and unmoored from any stated funding mechanism, reflects a recurring tension in democratic politics between the appeal of tangible reward and the discipline of governing reality. It arrives in a long tradition of campaign pledges that test whether hope, or skepticism, moves more voters to the polls.