Stereotype of Politicians Breaking Promises Essay -- Politics Politica

The Promise Trap28 family 1999A common complaint about politicians--so common its a stereotype--is that they uncover their promises. Audiences chance on one thing, the politician seems to do a nonher, 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 seldom 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 bring through 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 game for the various presidential nominations making promises. Often, they will sound/read something corresponding this promise from a recent speech by Steve Forbes Under my plan, that bullion is your bills. If you die prematurely, you can leave it to your spouse, to your children, to your grandchildren - tax-free and untouched by the politicians. Thats the example thing to do, and thats the promise of a Forbes Administration.Here Forbes is talking about a plan to create more wealth for retirement. As the quote all the way states, this money would pass from generation to generation tax free. The pronoun that at the fount of the first independent clause of the third sentence confabs to the situation of the money passing on tax free--so this passing is the moral thing to do. The countenance that in the second independent clause is a tricky because it could refer to the same situation as the first clause, or it could refer a general moral situation that Forbes hopes t... ...ow going in that, in near cases, they cannot deliver specific promises. Yet they promise anyway in rope ways meant to create the contract in the minds of the audience while go away an out when the unhappy outc ome 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. nighttime is day. Welcome to doublespeak.Works CitedAustin, 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.