When asked in 2008 at a campaign event whether he promised not to use signing statements, Obama said, simply, “Yes.” He followed up by describing the process of attaching a presidential interpretation to a bill at its signing into law as “not part of [the president’s] power.” Since becoming president, Obama has used signing statements on several occasions.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail in 2008, Obama was more qualified in his opposition to signing statements, saying they should be maintained but limited. But in saying one thing to potential voters and doing another in the Oval Office, Obama is in good company.
For example, who said the following:
“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races… there is a physical difference between the races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
Or this?
“I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”
The answers are below, but the point is they are both campaign statements by former U.S. presidents whose legacies are starkly at odds with those declarations. They make the following, obvious point: you can’t always believe what candidates for president of the United States say. Indeed, candidates often bluntly oppose politically unpopular policies they actually hope or expect to implement.
Most voters know that, of course. But if we don’t choose candidates based on the substance of what they say, how do we choose? In part, by judging their lies.
Of course, ideally everyone would analyze the positions of the candidates and assess their character, temperament and experience. That’s what the League of Women Voters encourages people to do.
In fact, voting behavior is directly influenced by everything from sports to genetics, and even “droughts, floods, and shark attacks,” as two political scientists famously noted.
Some observers are happy to declare voters are just plain dumb, corks bobbing on an ocean of unseen psychological and sociological currents. Optimists point to Samuel Popkin’s “low information” thesis as evidence that voters react to seemingly irrelevant signals that nonetheless provide short-cuts to larger candidate traits, like familiarity with an ethnic group or socio-economic class. (A good survey of dominant theories of voter behavior is here.)
Which is why so many candidates try to send messages that contradict their intended unpopular policies. Abraham Lincoln, accused of supporting slaves’ citizenship rights by Stephen Douglas in their famous 1858 contest for the U.S. Senate, tried to convince voters he was strongly opposed to full equality for blacks in the first quote above. In the second, Franklin Roosevelt, facing a concerted attack by the isolationist Wendell Wilkie as war engulfed Europe during the presidential campaign of 1940, felt compelled to assure Boston voters that he would not send them to fight against Hitler.
It’s also why the pivotal moments of campaigns are often the seemingly minor missteps when a candidate’s behavior inadvertently contradicts his declared position.
From McGovern seemingly baffled by the option of a kosher hot dog during a campaign stop at a deli to George W. Bush’s rumored drug use to Hillary Clinton’s exaggerated claims about the dangers of her visit to war time Bosnia, voters spend as much time figuring out which issues candidates are lying about as their declared policy positions.
Everyone knows presidential candidates are lying about something, we just don’t necessarily know what. Learning how, when and why a candidate lies can be the most important thing we discover about them.