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 will hear the politicians running for the various presidential nominations making promises. Often, they will sound/read something like this promise from a recent speech by Steve Forbes:

"Under my plan, that money is your money. If you die prematurely, you can leave it to your spouse, to your children, to your grandchildren - tax-free and untouched by the politicians. That's the moral thing to do, and that's the promise of a Forbes Administration."

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 name this ship Queen Elizabeth," spoken while smashing a bottle of champagne against the bow, is not to describe the action but to do the action. "I promise..." is just such a performative.

Further, Austin maintained that in order for the performative to have a "happy" outcome, the speaker must not "sin" against any one of several "rules." These include: "There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances, and further, the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked. The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly and completely. Where...the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts or feelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant, then a person participating in and so invoking the procedure must in fact have those thoughts and feelings, and the participants must intend so to conduct themselves, and further must actually so conduct themselves subsequently" (Austin 14-15).

A presidential candidate, speaking before an audience, automatically fulfills most of Austin's rules. But this begins to break down as we get to the part about having "certain thoughts or feelings." If the candidate either does not intend to carry out the promise, or knows that he cannot, he will create what Austin calls an "unhappy" outcome.

This brings us to the second issue. Presidents cannot deliver on specific promises because they are not in control of the Congress and barely have control of the bureaucracy. While a president does, through precedent, have certain prerogative powers, these powers are rarely enough to create the kind of outcomes that are the fodder of rhetorically-effective political promises. For example, it's easy to keep a promise of re-organizing the White House--that's within the president's direct power. It's also not very sexy in terms of wooing voters. Not so easy to deliver is a sexy promise to eliminate the inheritance tax--that takes working with Congress, where the idea will meet 535 different ideas.

How difficult is it for a president to accomplish his goals with the Congress and the bureaucracy? Just listen to former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter:

Gerald Ford: "The president thinks he has the right answers. The facts of history are that he doesn't always--but he thinks he does. And he would like to implement, he'd like to execute--to get things done. But under our system, the Congress has a very definite partnership....I've been on the other end of it. But if there was one part which I would really like to change, it would be the speed with which you could make decisions and carry them out." (qtd. in DiClerico 64)

Jimmy Carter: "Before I became president, I realized and was warned that dealing with the federal bureaucracy would be one of the worst problems I would have to face. It has been even worse than I had anticipated." (qtd. in DiClerico 164)

The candidates know going in that, in most cases, they cannot deliver specific promises. Yet they promise anyway in roundabout ways meant to create the contract in the minds of the audience while leaving an out when the "unhappy" outcome happens.

Austin is clear about what he thinks of situations such as these. As he says: "'I promise' entails 'I ought'...to say 'I promise' but not to perform the act is parallel to saying both 'it is' and 'it is not.' Just as the purpose of assertion is defeated by an internal contradiction, the purpose of a contract is defeated if we say 'I promise and I ought not'" (51).

Black is white. Night is day. Welcome to doublespeak.

Austin, J. L. How to Do Things With Words. Urmson, J. O. and Marina Sbisa, eds. Harvard UP, Cambridge, MA: 1975.

DiClerico, Robert E. The American President. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1995.