Campaign-Promises.com

By Adam Ziegler

While not keeping promises is a common criticism of many politicians, studies show presidents generally do an above-average job of fulfilling their campaign goals.

A large amount of research has been done on the topic, all of which this same result, said Michael Wagner, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Between 1912 and 1948, presidents fulfilled about 72 percent of their promises, Wagner said. That number rose to around 75 percent between the 1950s and 1970s, and even though it’s dropped recently, Wagner said, presidents still have a fairly high success rate.

“Typically, presidents work very hard to keep their campaign promises,” Wagner said.

President Bill Clinton had the highest rate of successful campaign promises of the last seven presidents, Wagner said. President Richard Nixon had the lowest rate of fulfilled promises with a 56 percent success rate.

President Bush has an average promise fulfillment rate, Wagner said, and he’s been able to deliver on some of the major promises from his 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

The No Child Left Behind Act is probably the biggest campaign promise Bush has been able to deliver, said John Hibbing, a political science professor at UNL. During his 2000 presidential campaign, passing the No Child Left Behind Act was a major part of Bush’s education platform.

Despite his average success rate, Bush has failed to deliver on some campaign promises, Hibbing said – the most obvious being his promise to work with Democrats in Congress. Bush’s ability to work with Democrats while governor of Texas was one of his key selling points during the 2000 election, Hibbing said, but that level of cooperation disappeared after Bush was elected president.

“He’s become perhaps the most polarizing president in terms of Republican support and Democrat opposition,” Hibbing said.

Bush’s promise to pass a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage during the 2004 campaign is another example of a promise that never came through, Wagner said.

Even though presidents put a lot of work into fulfilling their campaign goals, a variety of factors, including a president’s popularity and a lack of Congressional support, can lead to promises going unfulfilled, Hibbing said.

Lack of support in Congress is one of the most common reasons presidents’ don’t fulfill all their campaign promises, Hibbing said. If the opposing party controls Congress, they generally don’t support the president’s legislation, which makes it increasingly difficult for presidents to accomplish their campaign goals.

“If Congress is not supportive of what they’re trying to do, I don’t see how you can hold it against them,” Hibbing said.

Hibbing said while John McCain and Barack Obama have run on some hard-to-quantify goals, such as promising change and reform, the specifics of their promises on issues like taxes and the Iraq war seem fairly feasible and could continue the presidency’s high rate of successful campaign promises.

“A lot of their promises have been pretty vague, but if you look at what they propose, it’s all in the realm of possibility,” Hibbing said.

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