Promises

Making promises is easy, delivering on those promises can be hard.

Politicians make promises, its what they do to quote a current commercial.  Being able to deliver is quite another thing.  This is true for all politicians and while you clearly want to elect the one that promises the things you want as opposed to one who promises things you don't want, its also important to understand if they are real or empty promises.

In politics two things are required to deliver on a promise in this country.  The desire and power to do it.  One of the things that has led to the current distrust of Government are all the promises made by candidates that they couldn't deliver on, mostly because they didn't have the power, but sometimes they didn't have the desire either.

It is an infrequent event when one party has enough support in both houses of Congress to make fundamental changes One such scenario was after the election of 2008 when the Democrats were able to pass the Affordable Care Act.  An act that is attacked so very much but which has done so much good.

But that is a rare event since the senate rules require a majority of 60 to push through legislation.  Few remember that because we lost a senate sear the only way to pass the Affordable Care Act in the Senate was to accept the latest House version without revisions since the Democrats had only 59 votes.  A few known issues had to be left in.

However, making promises you can't keep is a time honored political tradition and one that shows no sign of ending.  Media coverage really tends to fail here since they repeat the promises without the proper analysis.  To the extent the promises simply represent goals to be pursued that's fine, but certain people actually believe these promises.  When the promises aren't delivered its because the Government is corrupt or untrustworthy.

I don't know if its always been this way.  It seems to me that we used to understand that campaign promises were goals and not guaranteed.  I think a lot of us still do understand that but sadly, it seems that when I talk to people, or see what they post on social media, they buy in to the idea that politicians are corrupt and untrustworthy.  Of course some are, but the vast majority on both sides aren't.  Maybe its the fact that everything is now instantaneous.  Further, we live in an age where irresponsible reporting is rampant.  Look at how much media was spent on where Obama was born when it wasn't even really an issue.  Partisan politics is actually tame compared to the partisan media we now have, but that is another topic.

I wish we could see more facts and less empty promises in our elections, but I'd also like to win the lottery.