During the course of the coming campaign, politicians will associate themselves with the benefits derived from all kinds of political favors. When your congress person cuts a ribbon for that new bridge, he'll take credit for getting the funding. No votes are won by taking the blame for the consequences of diverting those funds from yourpaycheck. No politician wants to stand up and beg forgiveness for taking money from you that might have made your life much better, even if your sacrifice made it possible to build a beautiful bridge to nowhere. The rule for claiming credit is to focus on the aggregate benefit, not the distributed consequences.
Facts tend to diminish bluster.
If you're going to claim credit for improving education, make sure education has improved. If you're going to claim credit for a federal budget surplus, make sure the debt didn't increase. If you're going to claim credit for the drug war, make sure we didn't lose it a long time ago. If you're going to claim credit for creating the Internet, make sure it wasn't established before you were born. Remember that a fool is one who doesn't know that he doesn't know the facts.