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Whither the sacred campaign promise?
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Jun 05, 2009 02:22pm |
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| Category | Opinion |
| Media | Newspaper - San Francisco Chronicle |
| News Date | Friday, June 5, 2009 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Though not (yet) having children of my own, I often consider what my future offspring won't know about and will find humorous. I fantasize that they will have no idea what gasoline-powered cars or private health insurance policies are. But I also worry they will guffaw in disbelief when I tell them politicians once knew that breaking campaign promises without explanation had consequences.
Historically, Americans generally held campaign promises sacred. We understood that republican democracy makes us rely on pledges of future action as the metric for choosing representatives; we knew that politicians reneging on pledges without adequate reason were desecrating that democracy; and we therefore often punished promise breakers accordingly.
I'm not idealizing halcyon days that never were - just ask George H.W. Bush, who lost re-election in 1992 after trampling his "no new taxes" guarantee. Indeed, breaking campaign pledges was one of the surest ways for politicians to hurt themselves - until 2006.
That year's highest-profile campaign was Connecticut's U.S. Senate race between incumbent Joe Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont - a race signaling a tectonic shift.
Lieberman had broken two key promises: He was violating an explicit term-limits pledge, and he vowed to "help end the war in Iraq" while working to continue it. And yet he was re-elected without ever explaining his reversals.
I'd like to think that result was merely a symptom of momentary shell shock. Perhaps an electorate so numbed by Republicans' then-recent attacks on John Kerry's changing positions was temporarily unable to process discussions of "flip-flopping."
But then behavior by President Obama suggests a more systemic assault on the campaign promise is under way. |
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