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Essay about Stereotype of Politicians Breaking Promises

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The Promise Trap 28 September 1999 A common complaint about politicians--so common it's a stereotype--is that they break their promises. Audiences hear one thing, the politician seems to do another, and then the complaining begins. This scenario could be the result of miscommunication on the part of the politician or misinterpretation on the part of the audience. But the reality is more complex. Politicians do make promises, although they rarely use the word as the verb and themselves as the subject of the sentence. And audiences do hear promises being made and have a right to expect action if the concept of a promise still creates a bond, or a contract, between the one who promises and the one promised. Listen carefully, and you …show more content…

So is this statement a campaign promise? You bet it is. The reason is simple: the audience will hear it as a promise--exactly the idea Forbes wants to create. And the audience will expect action. But the ambiguity of the actual statement would allow a president Forbes, who hypothetically fails to bring such a result, to claim no such promise was ever made--he only promised a certain moral situation would exist. Presidents, and presidential hopefuls, rarely make straight "I promise..." statements, although they do make such statements in different ways, as just shown, or more forthrightly with different verbs. Voters should be concerned any time a promise is made and for two reasons: 1) Ethically, a promise is a particular type of statement that creates a contract, and 2) because of the checks and balances of our constitutional government (the dynamics of the relationship between the executive and legislative branches), a president, or presidential candidate, knows going in that it is difficult to deliver on specific promises. Let's take a look at the first issue. Philosopher and linguist J. L. Austin delivered a series of lectures, part of the William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1955, about the performative utterance in language. He defined the performative, as opposed to the statement, as an utterance that does not describe or state that one is doing something, instead it is to do something. For example, the performative statement "I

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