All politicians are bad, because they need to be. All politicians have economic policies based on real economic theory, but no politician will ever try to explain comparative advantage to voters; any who did would not make it past the primaries. All politicians understand that change is a part of the economy, but a politician that tried to explain that some American jobs have to become obsolete -- just as telephone operators and icemen became obsolete -- would never make it to the primaries.
The same is true of ethics, legal process, international finance, governmental budgeting, and military policy. Telling people the real reasons things happen usually results in a loss of all ratings, immediately. I assume. Of course, I've never heard a politician or newscaster actually try.
This election saw a lot of people wanting a lot of change, and a lot of it being change for the worse. Bernie Sanders and Trump both ran on protectionist platforms, and Hillary jumped in on it when she saw what the voters wanted. Trump took American protectionism to new extremes, hoping to isolate ourselves not only from foreign economies but also from foreign people. He took policies that were originally worked out over four or more years and put in place were put on the rhetorical chopping block, with promises to replace them with... something. Eventually. Ignoring the fact that it took an entire presidential term or longer to develop them the first time around, and even then were sometimes only barely, or partially, passed. The Dodd–Frank act, Obamacare, NAFTA... and on the list goes.
I can't remember ever having a presidential candidate that said we needed anything less than a major overhaul of some major aspect of the current system, and it's starting to look like we aren't going to have one for the foreseeable future. On the one hand, this is almost inevitable; governance is a wicked problem set up to deal with a series of wicked problems. On the other hand, the bigger the changes a set of alternating competing parties makes, the further we move from a sustainable, predictable, and stable system.
And worst of all, in no case are we seeing politicians say "look what worked in country X. Let's do that." It is repeatedly, always, forever, "I want a new system that is the best." There is no best healthcare system; and if there is, Obamacare is not it. Nor will the next sui generis healthcare system be particularly good. If we could make really good healthcare systems from a priori reasoning, every country would already have really good healthcare. But what we can do is fix up an existing system to be a bit better, and a bit better, and a bit better, showing actual long term improvement in our situation.
American politics is too often directly opposed to this.
We have never seen a candidate more completely opposed to this than Donald Trump.