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defrogITEM: Despite the fact that most people (including, I admit, me) tend to assume that politicians are liars who never keep their promises (or at least the ones from the political party you oppose), this article from FiveThirtyEight indicates that this is is actually a grand misconception, at least when it comes to US Presidents:
The average of promises kept between 1933 and 1999 is 67%, with some time periods as high as 80%. Meanwhile, PolitiFact has tracked the last two admins and found they generally fall in line with the average. There’s also a caveat here: some promises don’t get kept due to circumstances that POTUS can’t control, or by changing circumstances that require a different approach, etc.
Anyway, it’s an interesting study. I do have a couple of comments to add, however:
1. Keeping campaign promises doesn’t necessarily make you honest. There’s a difference between keeping a campaign promise and lying about the facts feeding the justification of that promise. You may have been telling the truth when you said you would (say) get tough on immigration, but you may not have been telling the truth when you justified the need to get tough on immigration by claiming (say) that all immigrants are rapists, drug mules, terrorists and welfare queens.
2. That said, there’s also a difference between lying and being wrong via stunning (and possibly willful) ignorance. A lot of politicians repeat stories and claims that are untrue to make a point or formulate policy, but they believe that they are true – and continue to believe they’re true regardless of how much evidence you present to debunk it.
So we could say that most politicians may be honest, but they're also dumb ignorant hicks who get elected because there are plenty of other dumb ignorant hicks who believe the same nonsense they do.
This is progress?
Trust me,
This is dF
Political scientists have been studying the question of campaign promises for almost 50 years, and the results are remarkably consistent. Most of the literature suggests that presidents make at least a “good faith” effort to keep an average of about two-thirds of their campaign promises; the exact numbers differ from study to study, depending on how the authors define what counts as a campaign promise and what it means to keep it.
The average of promises kept between 1933 and 1999 is 67%, with some time periods as high as 80%. Meanwhile, PolitiFact has tracked the last two admins and found they generally fall in line with the average. There’s also a caveat here: some promises don’t get kept due to circumstances that POTUS can’t control, or by changing circumstances that require a different approach, etc.
Anyway, it’s an interesting study. I do have a couple of comments to add, however:
1. Keeping campaign promises doesn’t necessarily make you honest. There’s a difference between keeping a campaign promise and lying about the facts feeding the justification of that promise. You may have been telling the truth when you said you would (say) get tough on immigration, but you may not have been telling the truth when you justified the need to get tough on immigration by claiming (say) that all immigrants are rapists, drug mules, terrorists and welfare queens.
2. That said, there’s also a difference between lying and being wrong via stunning (and possibly willful) ignorance. A lot of politicians repeat stories and claims that are untrue to make a point or formulate policy, but they believe that they are true – and continue to believe they’re true regardless of how much evidence you present to debunk it.
So we could say that most politicians may be honest, but they're also dumb ignorant hicks who get elected because there are plenty of other dumb ignorant hicks who believe the same nonsense they do.
This is progress?
Trust me,
This is dF
