I've often wondered why we can't hold politicians accountable for their promises. It seems clearer and clearer that they will say what is necessary in order to get elected and then not even try to cover up that they don't do what they said they would during the campaign and it seems that it's getting worse every single day.

Seriously, why isn't this breach of contract or something. Afterall, we are protected from salesmen who promise something and deliver something different, why in the world can't we expect that from a president?

We have laws that protect consumers from false advertising, how is this different from the advertising (promises made) during campaigns except that the ramifications are so much more serious? We have lemon laws on cars that don't perform as expected, why don't we have laws on POTUS' that don't perform as they promised they would?

A lot of the time, broken promises are a direct result of Congressional pressure. For instance, Reagan broke his central promises (to shut down fairly useless bureaucratic departments) not because he was a slime ball, but because the bureaucrats had friends in Congress.

Also, promises are often broken because the rich and powerful elite don't like the promises, even if the common citizen does. The rich and powerful are, well, rich and powerful. It's very rare that you'll see laws passed that don't favor the few thousand wealthy elite.

Besides, we'd wind up booting Presidents every six months.

See this is why we need a POTUS that comes from real poverty, or real middle-class. Not some fake, harvard-educated (with anonymous contributors to his tuition) promise breaking, POTUS. Oh wait, that accounts for alot of the past POTUS'.

I mean that for EVERY POTUS. Not just present-day. The next president should be from a normal, 100,000+ city, in which his family made about <75,000 a year, BLUE-collar worker, not some white-collar bureaucrat.

Which will NEVER happen.

[edit on 12-8-2009 by havok]