That was a standard BC04 talking point over the summer — “promises made, promises kept.” I never understood why they’d use it, considering how different candidate Bush was from President Bush, which may help to explain why the phrase was dropped from the rhetorical repertoire.
But Kevin Drum noticed an interesting Knight Ridder report that explained that less than half of Bush’s promises from four years ago have been kept.
President Bush will end his four-year term having fulfilled about 46 percent of the promises he made during the 2000 presidential campaign, according to an analysis by Knight Ridder.
Progress on Bush’s campaign to-do list — 178 specific commitments — slowed almost to halt in 2004 as election-year politics intruded on legislative activity. With time running out on his four-year contract, Bush’s hopes for overhauling the nation’s legal system, revamping Social Security and enacting a new national energy policy now depend on the outcome of the November election.
This list of promises was drawn from speeches and policy papers issued during Bush’s first presidential campaign. It includes items large and small, with equal weight given to all. Some required congressional action. Others went into effect by executive order.
This includes some pretty specific promises, not vague goals. A promise to “change the tone in Washington,” for example, doesn’t count, but the promise to “pay down the national debt to the lowest level since the Great Depression” does. KR has a thorough and well-researched list available online.
But this report also leads one to wonder why Bush failed to fulfill most of his campaign promises.
After all, a Republican White House with a Republican Congress, which has been more than willing to do Bush’s bidding, sounds like a recipe for easy legislating. The president could effectively count on lawmakers to give him anything he wanted, but he still only followed through on 46% of his commitments.
Some might assume that all presidents make a series of promises that they have no intention of keeping. It’s a historical cliché at this point. Knight Ridder doesn’t look back too far into the past, but it does contrast the current president with his immediate predecessor.
A similar Knight Ridder analysis found that, during his first term, President Clinton had fulfilled about 66 percent of the 160 commitments that he made during his first presidential campaign.
Half of Clinton’s first term was with an angry, uncompromising Republican majority led by Newt Gingrich. And he still did a better job of fulfilling his campaign promises than Bush.