I have noticed that the majority of my blog posts involve President Obama in one way or another, but I think that’s alright. We can learn a lot from how President Obama has governed so far in this past year. I think that his Presidency so far has been fascinating. As we look at the Obama administration, we try to draw away as much as we can from what we are seeing with the President and what we have learned in the class. One thing that I have observed throughout the semester involving the last several presidents is just how much presidents seem to go back on their campaign promises. Is seems to be a consistent theme with presidents in the latter half of the twentieth century, and in a way I think it may be inevitable for presidents to try and follow all of their campaign promises they made during presidential elections.
After analyzing this situation over the promises presidential candidates make during elections, I have found myself taking a serious interest in the issue over campaign promises. As we look at the Obama administration is seems that this idea of trying to fulfill campaign promises is just as apparent in his presidency as well. Although President Obama hasn’t quite served a full year in office, we can see that he has already gone back on some of his original campaign promises. One of the promises President Obama made was that he was going to end the petty and partisan politics in Washington, but as we look at this past year we can see that partisan politics has been one of the most prevalent problems in Washington. President Obama has tried to create an environment that seeks bipartisan efforts in Washington, but one factor that has placed a thorn in his attempts to do this is the healthcare debate. As the healthcare debate drags along, we can see that partisan politics hasn’t been more prevalent until now. Early on in the debate over healthcare reform Republicans and Democrats have fought over the different provisions in this healthcare overhaul. It has even reached the point to where Republicans have been shut out of meetings on healthcare reform by key Democratic officials, like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The efforts that President Obama has made to create an environment of bipartisan politics have failed.
Another issue that has been significant for President Obama is trying to create a government that is more transparent. One of the promises President Obama made when he was running for president was that he was going to create more transparency in the government, but as we have seen with past presidents, President Obama has fallen into the same old trap. His promise for transparency has proven to be harder to fulfill than what he originally thought. With the dilemma over water boarding and enhanced interrogation techniques, President Obama showed us that transparency is not always the best answer. We saw this with the Obama administration deciding that it was not going release all of the photos that the CIA had on the interrogation techniques.
Finally, President Obama has promised that he would not create any new taxes for the middle class, but once again this may be inevitable as well. With our national deficit through the roof, our government may have no other choice but to raise taxes for the middle class as a way to bring the national deficit down.
Overall, I think one way or another, presidents will eventually have to go back on some campaign promises they make, and I think that it’s just a reality that comes with the position.
I don’t think that we can expect that a politician to keep all of the promises they make when campaigning. If they were to say they are going to try or attempt to do something instead of do it, they wouldn’t get elected. Americans want to see action and so promising action is the next best thing that politicians can do. Obama was very idealistic–and perhaps still is–when he was running for president and one of the biggest complaints was that he promised many things but no way to accomplish them. I think that what we’re seeing is that he doesn’t have an easy way to accomplish many things. Part of his mistake it seems, is that he wasn’t prepared for how slow the system is and thought that immediate action would be possible. Obviously, it isn’t. I think that we do need to accept the reality that politicians, including Obama, are going to make promises they can’t keep. We want someone who we think will take action, not someone who we think will merely try, and likely fail.