Please Don't Keep Your Political Promises

I don't expect political candidates to keep their promises. 

There's a news flash for you, right? I am not suggesting a cynical "everybody lies to get elected" evaluation. That is often true, but that's not my point. At least in theory, promises are predictions of future performance. And that's why I don't expect candidates to keep their promises.

They can't predict the future with any accuracy beyond that of a coin flip. I am not suggesting that candidates for office are less intelligent than other people. Instead, they possess the same mix of intelligence and ignorance as we find in ourselves and everyone else. No one is particularly good at predicting how things will turn out in the long run.

The long run is essentially unpredictable.

So I am not impressed by campaign promises. These promises are merely efforts to tell explanatory stories that will make us feel better about our settled prejudices and preconceptions. And the less the candidate knows, the easier it is for the candidate to create a confident, compelling and coherent narrative. "Paradoxically," writes Daniel Kahneman, "it is easier to construct a coherent story when you know little, when there are fewer pieces to fit into the puzzle. Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance." (Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 201).

I have little interest in prospective promises. No one can predict when a plane might fly into a tall tower--at least not years in advance. No one can predict when a category five hurricane will strike the southern coast or a magnitude eight earthquake will devastate the western states. No one can predict when a stroke or a tumor or a reckless driver will alter or end a political career. And certainly no one can predict how that collection of toddlers we call the United States Congress will respond to political stimuli on any given day.

Political promises are little more than rhetorical chocolate. We should be wise enough to base our expectations and decisions on more substantive information. If we do not, then we get the representation we deserve.

That more substantive information involves how the candidates respond to unexpected problems. It also involves their actual records of decision-making in their lives and work. We would get better representation if we generated simply formulas to measure those problem solving skills and then allowed a machine to make the final choice. We could vote on those criteria, and that would be enough democracy for my tastes.

Unfortunately, we are far too impressed with our own powers of discernment and insight to allow such simple solutions to be used.  So we listen to campaign promises that cannot be kept. Then we complain when they are not kept. Or we are impressed with the wooden rigidity of those who keep their promises no matter what--even when that foolish consistency results in paralyzed government.

Let us extract fewer promises as the price of our votes. Let us focus on the folks who know enough to stop making promises and do some actual governing.