• Cover Story
• Table of
  Contents
• Contents By
  Topic
• Columns
  • Brownstein
  • Cook
  • Crook
  • Powers
  • Rauch
  • Stokes
  • Schneider
  • Taylor Jr.
• Regular
  Features
  • Hotline Extra
  • Inside Washington
  • Insiders Poll
  • K Street Corridor
  • People
  • The Week on the Hill

Online ExtraCampaign Promises
Search a comprehensive directory of the pledges Barack Obama and John McCain have made on the campaign trail and online.

25 Key Promises:
• McCain
• Obama

For all of their differences, Barack Obama and John McCain have crafted similar political identities. Both portray themselves as outside the mainstream. Both pledge to reform a broken system, reach across the aisle, and put the nation's interests ahead of party. And both presumptive presidential nominees have backed up those overarching guarantees with a raft of specific promises.

As voters assess the candidates' competing visions, they must also weigh how likely either man would be to follow through on his promises. If history is any guide, the answer is "very."

"There's this myth that politicians will say anything to get elected, but that generally is not the case," said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. "They take their public statements seriously. And they know they're going to be held accountable by the media and the opposition."

Gerald Pomper, a professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University, agrees: "I think Obama or McCain, if they're elected, will try to do what they said they were going to do."

In studying party platforms in presidential elections from 1944 to 1976, Pomper found that presidents converted about 70 percent of their party's promises into policy. He said that track record is "pretty good," considering that about half of U.S. marriages end in divorce--a broken vow.

Jeff Fishel, a professor emeritus of government at American University, reached a similar conclusion in his study of presidential performance, published in the 1985 book Presidents & Promises. Fishel tracked campaign pledges from John F. Kennedy through Ronald Reagan and determined that presidents followed through about 66 percent of the time. He gave credit for effort, even when it didn't translate into signed legislation, as well as for actual achievements. Both Fishel and Pomper distinguish between specific proposals and rhetorical promises, such as "I will uphold American values," which can't be judged objectively.

More recently, scholars and reporters have concluded that Bill Clinton made good on more promises than he broke. Certainly, he pushed that message in 1996. By the end of his second term, Clinton had delivered welfare reform, a diverse Cabinet, increased funding for Head Start, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and a balanced budget.

Yet, it's the broken promises that people often remember. In 1992, Clinton promised "the most ethical administration" in history. His predecessor, George H.W. Bush, famously vowed "No new taxes" in the run-up to the 1988 election, and then raised taxes while in office. Going back further, Franklin D. Roosevelt reneged on his 1932 campaign pledges to maintain a balanced budget and to cut government operations by 25 percent. Herbert Hoover ran in 1928 with the slogan "Vote for prosperity" and predicted "a final triumph over poverty"; the next year, the nation plunged into the Great Depression.

"Public cynicism is a real response to the gap between promises and performance," said Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University. "Promises have gotten larger and more extensive. And from the point of view of the public, the achievements haven't been there."

Obama acknowledged as much even as he launched his candidacy in February 2007 with the promise of sweeping change. "All of us running for president will travel around the country offering 10-point plans and making grand speeches; all of us will trumpet those qualities we believe make us uniquely qualified to lead the country," he said outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. "But too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own."

In many cases, however, politicians made promises in good faith but ran into insurmountable obstacles. "The institutional setting is a big complication in fulfilling promises," West said. "You may have every intention of fulfilling a promise, but if the other party controls Congress it will be very difficult for you to follow through on that."

Wayne attributed some of the public's cynicism about political promises to the way that candidates portray themselves. "They campaign as if they could themselves direct that change, when the best they can do is nudge and bargain and facilitate that change," he said. The "I will" statements that candidates make by the dozen reflect their desire to live up to the electorate's wish for a strong leader, Wayne said. Voters simultaneously want a president who is larger than life but has the common touch, someone who is a commanding force but flexible. And voters also seem to want candidates who have integrity yet promise more than they can reasonably expect to deliver.

Perhaps attempting to scale back expectations, McCain emphasized the limits on presidential authority in a May speech detailing his plans for his first term. "I am well aware I cannot make any of these changes alone. The powers of the presidency are rightly checked by the other branches of government, and I will not attempt to acquire powers our Founders saw fit to grant Congress," McCain said.

The next president's ability to create change will also be determined in part by his personality and staff, but the most significant factor may be one that isn't yet known. Many of the notorious presidential reversals resulted from unforeseen circumstances. Campaigning in 1940 for a third term, Roosevelt repeatedly pledged, "Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." The U.S. entered World War II immediately after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. Likewise, before the 2000 election, candidate George W. Bush insisted that he didn't intend to use the military for nation building. Then 9/11 happened, and he changed course.

Pomper said that voters recognize the inherent uncertainty about what lies ahead, and they rely on "retrospective voting," which takes into account how the candidate's party has performed in the past. "You can't predict the future, so what you want to know is, what kind of person" is the candidate? Pomper said. "Can I trust him or her in a situation that none of us knows yet?" Pomper added, "John McCain's problem is that voters are going to be judging [him by] how well Republicans have behaved in the past."

For Obama, the "change" message that helped him to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the battle for their party's nomination could hurt him once he's in office. "Were Obama to be elected," Wayne said, "expectations of his leadership would be very broad and quite diverse because, as he himself has said, people see him as a blank slate. So I think his problem would be: If he's elected, how's he going to meet the expectations that he's created?"

Obama has attempted to define his brand of change in speeches and in a 64-page plan, "The Blueprint for Change." To address the housing crisis, he promises to target fraudulent lenders and revise bankruptcy laws. For workers, he pledges to increase the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and to renegotiate NAFTA. His plan for the environment rests on a promise to reduce the nation's oil consumption by at least 35 percent by 2030 and a commitment to implement a 10-year, $150 billion plan to develop green enterprises. In May, Obama told an audience in Michigan, "I'll be a president who finally keeps the promise that's made year after year after year by providing domestic automakers with the funding they need to retool their factories and make fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel cars."

The core Obama commitments are, of course, to provide universal health care and to bring most U.S. troops home from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. In contrast, McCain's health care plan relies on a tax credit so that individuals can choose among options. On Iraq, he has vowed to "never surrender." In response to 9/11, McCain has said, "If I have to follow him to the Gates of Hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice." Other prominent McCain promises include stopping the "spending spree in Washington" and vetoing any spending bill that includes earmarks. He has also promised to propose a balanced budget by the end of his first term and aggressively combat global warming.

On the campaign trail, McCain has repeatedly pledged to work with Democrats and include them in his administration. On June 3, the night that Obama reached the number of pledged delegates necessary to secure his party's nomination, McCain declared in a televised speech, "Both Senator Obama and I promise we will end Washington's stagnant, unproductive partisanship. But one of us has a record of working to do that. And one of us doesn't." Both candidates have also promised to diminish lobbyists' influence and make transparency and accountability central to their administrations. McCain said he will hold press conferences at least every two weeks, and Obama has pledged "to end the abuse of no-bid contracts."

The Brookings Institution's West pointed to taxes as an area where promises tend to reflect a candidate's larger agenda, because revenue levels have ramifications for health care, education, foreign policy, and everything else involving the government. "It's not just a tax pledge; it's a pledge about your general orientation to government," he said.

Obama has promised tax cuts for the middle class and to eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs abroad, while McCain has said he intends to reduce the corporate tax rate, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and repeal the alternative minimum tax. In February, at the prodding of George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC's This Week, McCain made the "No new taxes" pledge that came back to bite the first Bush. That marked a turnaround for the senator from Arizona, who had refused to sign Americans for Tax Reform's no-new-taxes pledge and bristled when asked to make a similar declaration on Fox News Sunday in April 2007.

Following tradition, McCain and Obama have tailored promises to particular voting blocs. While in Florida, McCain said he would fix the Federal Emergency Management Agency and improve options for homeowners' insurance. At a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama promised to protect Israel. Both candidates have committed to doing more to include American Indians.

With each promise, wording is everything. A pledge to tackle a topic could be satisfied with a speech. And even the most-specific vows can sometimes go unfulfilled without sparking a public outcry. Take Ronald Reagan, who abandoned his promise to abolish the Education Department. "I don't think he paid any price for that. It was something a small cluster of people were concerned about," Fishel said. "Whereas, Lyndon Johnson promised not to send any American boys to foreign wars, and he paid heavily for [Vietnam]. It has to do with the magnitude, the number of people that are affected, when a president reverses course."

It also has to do with who's watching. This election, issue-oriented bloggers have joined the news media in monitoring candidates. West considers the inclusion of more voices a positive development. "I think we've seen the democratization of scrutiny," he said. "It used to be the establishment press kept track of promises and performance. Today, there are thousands of citizen-journalists all across America who keep track of what candidates say." Already, McCain and Obama have been called out for appearing to switch positions for political expediency. A search on YouTube for "McCain" or "Obama" accompanied by the phrase "flip-flops" yields dozens of videos.

In Wayne's view, "If a presidential candidate doesn't keep his promises but the times are good, it's not going to matter. If a presidential candidate keeps his promises but they don't work, it sure as hell will matter."

But in the long run, political legacies are defined by results--not a tally of kept or broken pledges. The best presidents have often known when to shift. As California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared recently on This Week, "Flip-flopping is getting a bad rap, because I think it's great."

"As long as he's honest or she's honest, I think that is a wonderful thing," he continued. "You can change your mind. I have changed my mind on things, and there is nothing wrong with it."

For a comprehensive list of Obama and McCain promises, not just the 50 included in this article, go to nationaljournal.com/campaigns.