Inside Politics - August 2004

The “Wooing Season” Begins

Time for Political Promises

by Ande Engleman

"Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten." Dick Gregory (1972)

Political, or campaign, promises have been around since elections began. And, as in many relationships, the promises kept are not remembered as clearly as those that are broken. One historic broken campaign promise came from President Herbert Hoover. He promised "a chicken in every pot." Instead, voters got the Great Depression and Hoover got the gate.

We are in that "wooing" season again. Candidates at all levels are making promises. Many are vague: "I’ll give real representation to this district." Others are meaningless. And still others, such as Hoover’s chicken in every pot, can be called "heroic assumptions." This is a term used in economics that means a serious departure from reality.

The reality is that many campaign promises cannot be kept. For example, one legislative candidate is promising that tax money will go to the classroom and not to administrators. He needs to run for the school board, not the Assembly. As the late Mike O’Callahan wrote, "There’s nothing more sickening than listening to a candidate for a legislative office explaining how he or she will take actions that only the executive branch has the power to perform." Of course, the reverse is also true. California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is finding it hard to keep his campaign promises. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he really didn’t understand the system well enough to know what was possible.

Then there are those candidates who promise to run government like a business, thereby exhibiting their total ignorance of the U.S. and Nevada Constitutions. Government is not a business. It requires consensus and public support to move it.

Candidates running for re-election want to put a happy face on whatever failures they’ve had in office, or on broken promises from the last campaign. They want you to believe their leadership has turned the ragweed to roses – never mind that we’re all still sneezing. And if the voters have forgotten a broken promise or two, opponents are more than willing to remind them. "You and I are expected to keep our commitments," said political consultant Jim Denton. "Voters have a right to know from an elected official’s opponent that an individual has not lived up to previous commitments."

The advertising begins. Television, radio and print ads scream about the lies and failures of various candidates. The more vitriolic the ads, the more the public says they deplore them, and they don’t believe any of them. But they work. Pollsters will tell you that numbers go up and down depending upon the ads.

Some officials try to deny they made a promise. They call such ads dirty campaigning, say it’s only politics and insist that, "What I said was not what I meant." Caught in the middle of all these claims and counterclaims is the voter. Who is she or he to believe? Campaign ads promise voters men and women of experience, savvy and street smarts – summa cum laude graduates of assertiveness-training school. Then they take office and begin to sound like shepherds trying to figure out which way the flock went, or wants to go.

When it finally comes time to vote, people frequently make their decisions based upon something other than campaign promises. One consultant calls it "like-ability." A scene from the old movie, Rally Round the Flag, Boys, shows a young woman wading ashore from a rowboat. "I thought you said you like kissing," a confused young man calls out to his fleeing companion. "I like kissing," she replies. "It’s you I can’t stand."

Ande Engleman
Ande Engleman is producer and co-host of Nevada NewsMakers, a television program broadcast on KVBC in Las Vegas and KRNV in Reno.