Aaron David Miller Quotes

Almost every politician running for office comes out with a set of plans so that they can demonstrate how serious they are about fixing the state’s problems. But once the election is over and the candidate takes his or her oath, you rarely here a peep about those plans again. They end up on a shelf somewhere gathering dust.

The problems of the country look very different from the Oval Office than they do from the campaign trail.

Every four years, presidents claim more than they have accomplished; opponents portray alternative policies in terms that can only later lead to disillusion.

From my experience with 5 presidential elections, candidates sometimes say things when campaigning that they don't necessacerily do when they are governing.

There is always a gap between what candidates say in the heat of the campaign, when they are not constrained by the realities of governance, and how they act after being sworn into office.

The good and the bad news is that politicians rarely do what they say they are going to do when they campaign.

There is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.

When I got into politics, it was a shock. People promise all sorts of things and then never deliver.

Promising is not giving, but serves to content fools.

Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.

A politician is well-qualified if his promises are, too.

Do after election as before election you said you would.

If you break a promise, the outcome is uncertain and the number of people affected is small. But if you refuse to make a promise, the result is certain and produces immediate anger in a larger number of voters..

The noble aspirations, neat promises and slogans of a campaign get bent out of recognition or even break as you try to nail them down to the Procrustean bed of reality.

Obviously in a campaign, people say lots of things that they find, when they get in the office, life's a little different.

I'm tired of politicians saying one thing to get elected and then going to Washington, D.C., or Denver or wherever and completely forgetting about you.

Politicians never keep all their promises.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I've been looking at some video clips on YouTube of President Obama - then candidate Obama - going through Iowa making promises. The gap between his promises and his performance is the largest I've seen, well, since the Kardashian wedding and the promise of 'til death do we part.

I don't think anybody has ever been able to live up to what they promised. I don't know a government that has ever been successful at that because once they get into power, things change and the world is controlled also by business now.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.

So you know, I think that the federal government, the Democrats, and President Obama are selling a lot of hope and change, but no delivery of any of those promises.

Take the pledge and after you’re elected, do whatever you want.

Voters never grow weary of illusory promises.

All men prefer a false promise to a flat refusal.