Image via Complex Original
It’s after Labor Day, which means goodbye to white shoes and hello to the high gear for campaign season. As we turn our attention from last week's Republican National Convention, and much-ridiculed speeches from VP nominee Paul Ryan and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, to the Democratic National Convention this week, it is prime time for candidates on both sides of the aisle to start making campaign promises they have no intention of fulfilling.
Most of these will be garden variety pandering: No new taxes, 12 million new jobs, that kind of thing. But some will be truly crazy, outlandish, or bizarre, and in their lunacy will illustrate just how silly this whole process of ours can be sometimes. So it is in honor of these latter that we present the 15 craziest politician campaign promises in American politics.
Written by Adam Martin (@ghostofkelor)
15. Dennis Kucinich promises to arrest George W. Bush
Dennis Kucinich was never shy about calling first for the impeachment and then the arrest of George W. Bush for starting the Iraq war, but according to a Daily Kos writer who attended his address to the 2007 Latino Congreso in Los Angeles, he built that promise into his 2008 presidential campaign. He said in his address: “Now the people in the administration of George Bush better remember their Miranda rights, because when I’m elected president I’m going to see that they are arrested. I’m not kidding here.”
14. Joe Biden promises Barack Obama has a big stick
Oh, Vice President Joe Biden, you always know just what to say. The veep was making the point to a group of NYU students that President Barack Obama wouldn’t be soft in his foreign policy. But you know college students, always reading the double meaning in things.
How can you not, though, when Biden says this: "Now is the time to heed the timeless advice from Teddy Roosevelt. Speak softly and carry a big stick. End of quote. I promise you, the president has a big stick. I promise you.” Biden, you can bring the Beavis and Butthead out in anybody.
13. Barack Obama promises not to call Mitt Romney weird
Before this year’s campaign devolved into attack ads so vicious one all but accused Mitt Romney of murder, the Barack Obama campaign was promising to play nice. Well, not exactly nice, but it was promising not to call Mitt Romney “weird,” which is, in itself, pretty weird.
After Politico pointed out last summer that Obama’s people had been making pretty liberal use of the word “weird” in connection with their presumed opponent, top Obama adviser David Axelrod told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that anybody on the campaign calling Mitt Romney “weird” would be fired.
But as Mediaite noted out at the time, the point had already been pretty thoroughly made: Obama’s people thought Romney was weird, and they didn’t even have to make an attack ad saying it.
12. Michael Dukakis promises to oppose the death penalty for his wife’s imaginary killer
It wasn’t quite a campaign promise, but Michael Dukakis’s answer to a question about his stance on the death penalty in a 1988 debate is widely seen as costing him the election. Damn it was a hell of a question, though.
In a debate against Vice President George H.W. Bush, moderator Bernard Shaw dropped this bombshell: “Governor, if [your wife] Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Dukakis was supposed to express his sympathy with the victims of crimes, political operative Susan Estrich wrote later. But he didn’t.
Rather, he stayed on message "No, I don't, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life." Wrong answer, but whatever. What’s crazy is to have a presidential candidate talking about his wife’s imagined rape and murder on national television.
11. Teddy Roosevelt promises not to run next time
For a popular president, a pledge not to seek office again seems counterintuitive, but that was part of Teddy Roosevelt’s campaign in 1908, and he held to it, apparently out of a sense of propriety and tradition. Of course, that didn’t stop Roosevelt from running for a third term in 1912, but by that time his faithful, hand-picked successor William Howard Taft had been in office for four years and had his own supporters.
The two men split the Republican Party as Roosevelt wound up running as a Progressive, and Woodrow Wilson ended up taking the nomination. Roosevelt probably should have gone for that third term while he could, like his cousin.
10. Sarah Palin promises she will be more rogue
This was more of a pre-campaign promise, but Sarah Palin promising to be even more rogue the next time she runs for office was like Honey Boo Boo’s producers promising even more exploitation (you can bet that’s coming). Since going or being “rogue” was Palin’s main, perhaps only selling point in 2008, going even “more rogue” is hard to wrap one’s head around. In the end, she went so rogue she didn’t even run, which, when you think about it, is just about as nonconformist as you can get as a politician.
9. Rick Santorum promises to ban hard-core pornography
The funny thing about Sen. Rick Santorum’s proposed ban on pornography was that he volunteered it on his website, instead of agreeing to it as a condition to garner support, as US Rep. Michele Bachmann did. The other funny thing about it was that he called for a ban specifically of hard-core porn, which suggests he’s OK with some softer versions.
The statement on Santorum’s site doesn’t seem to be working anymore, but Snopes has a copy in which he calls it “toxic to marriages and relationships.” Not nearly as toxic as constantly hunting around on computers and under mattresses for evidence of said porn, we’d suggest.
8. Vermin Supreme promises ponies for everyone
Perennial joke candidate Vermin Supreme has made a lot of crazy promises, but his pledge to give a pony to every American is probably the craziest because of how thoroughly he’s thought it through as a civic plan. At New Hampshire’s Lesser-Known Democratic Candidates Forum last December, Supreme explained that he supported moving the United States to a pony-based economy and using ponies as a form of national identification, which would mean you’d have to have yours with you at all times.
Strangely, coming after three minutes of deadpan delivery about his mandatory tooth-brushing program, which involves lab-created flying monkeys, the pony promise doesn’t even seem all that weird.
7. Andy Caffrey promises to smoke a joint on the steps of the US Capitol
Californians love living up to their stereotypes. But nobody does it better than Andy Caffrey, a congressional candidate from north of San Francisco, who smokes legal, medicinal pot on the campaign trail and promises that if elected he’ll spark up a joint on the steps of the US Capitol. He’ll get arrested if he has to, he told Politico, but by god he’s going to hit that shit where it counts.
Obviously one of Caffrey’s issues is legalizing pot nationwide. It’s been legal medically in California since 1996, and Caffrey would be representing what the San Francisco Chronicle called “America’s pot breadbasket,” from the Golden Gate Bridge to Oregon, so what sounds like a crazy stunt on a national level will probably gain him huge points back at home.
6. Herman Cain promises to veto any bill longer than three pages
Herman Cain’s campaign to be the Republican nominee for president was a gift to comedians for good reason: It was ridiculous, but a lot of the time he was kind of right.
His promise to veto any bill longer than three pages was completely wacky, obviously, but it made a good point: Legislation often gets too confusing for most of us to understand, and often includes insidious riders that keep it from getting passed at all. With a three-page bill, Cain explained, “You’ll have time to read that one over the dinner table.”
Of course, hardly any issue that requires legislating will be more complicated than a three-page bill would allow. But Cain makes a good point. As Salon’s Alex Pareene wrote, “You’d think there’d be a happy medium between 2,700 and … three, but I’ve never been sure at what point exactly legislation becomes too long.”
5. Warren G. Harding promises a “return to normalcy”
The funny thing about President Warren G. Harding’s “return to normalcy” is that it is a straight-up promise to go back to how things were in the good old days. It’s something candidates today dance around, but never actually say outright. Candidates normally like to look forward (to moon bases in 2020, for example), but after World War I, all anybody wanted was to go back to how things were before the war, and Harding knew it.
So, instead of pledging great public projects or ambitious government programs, Harding promised a return to isolationism, steadiness, and nativism. “My best judgment of America’s needs is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path,” Harding said. Basically it was, “Hey, you know what our problem is? Doing stuff. How about we do a little less for a while, eh?” And it worked. Harding won the election of 1920 and became president in 1921.
4. Hunter S. Thompson promises to sod the streets of Aspen
Hunter S. Thompson’s 1970 campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County, CO, which followed the 1969 defeat of “freak power” candidate Joe Edwards, included a promise to jackhammer the streets of Aspen and replace the asphalt with sod. The city would use the discarded asphalt “to create a huge parking and auto-storage lot on the outskirts of town.”
He also promised to change the name of the town to Fat City, to discourage “greed-heads, land-rapers, and other human jackals from capitalizing on the name Aspen.” These swine, he wrote, “should be fucked, broken, and driven across the land.” If all this sounds as or more zany than Biafra’s campaign in San Francisco, that’s compounded by Thompson’s seriousness in his campaign, detailed in his book The Great Shark Hunt, and his very near defeat.
According to William McKeen’s book Outlaw Journalist, Thompson racked up 1,065 votes, compared with his opponent Carroll D. Whitmire’s 1,533. Had he campaigned a little harder, Aspen could very well have grassy streets today.
3. Herbert Hoover promises a chicken in every pot (and a car in every garage)
Most frequently attributed to Herbert Hoover’s 1928 campaign, this promise actually came from the Republican National Committee, which ran it in newspaper advertisements and circulars while Hoover was running on a platform of prosperity. It’s not a bad image (Republican Party historian George Mayer traced it back to Henry IV in 17th century France), and these days we don’t even question it as a symbol for prosperity.
But think about it a second. A chicken in every pot. Taken literally, you start to imagine an old-timey truck with USDA plates driving slowly up the block, guys hanging off the back trash-man style to dash chickens up to every door, still squawking and flapping for some reason. Gross. And SO crazy.
2. Jello Biafra promises to make businessmen wear clown suits
You don’t need us to explain what’s crazy about former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra’s promise to make all businessmen wear clown suits during his 1979-80 mayoral bid in San Francisco. Flagrant violation of personal liberty aside, that’s just too much money for a city to spend on enforcing a dress code (however hilarious).
What’s even more crazy is that 3.5 percent of the city’s electorate voted for him despite (or perhaps because of) that zany plank in his platform. Other promises, such as legalizing squatting and making beat cops win a neighborhood vote of confidence to keep their job, were just realistic enough to work, although ultimately Dianne Feinstein won the race.
1. Newt Gingrich promises a US Moon colony by 2020
On its face, Newt Gingrich’s January 2012 pledge to establish a permanent US colony on the moon by the end of his second term was the craziest campaign promise we’ve heard in some time, especially from a candidate in a major national race. It sounded like something out of a Ray Bradbury work, but even less realistic.
Gingrich would of course tell you there’s precedent: In 1961, John F. Kennedy famously promised to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and the United States did. But Kennedy’s pledge wasn’t part of his campaign—he made it to Congress after he was already safely in office—and it was a lot more realistic.
While Kennedy promised huge investment in NASA, acknowledging the moon mission would cost Americans a lot if it were to succeed, Gingrich wanted to make his moon base a reality by cutting the agency and using a portion of its budget to fund prizes for private industry competitions. That worked for the X prize for private space flight, but as Discover magazine’s Phil Plait pointed out, “going to the Moon and building a base would cost more than 1000 times as much as launching that sub-orbital rocket did, so it’s not at all clear an X Prize like this would work.”
And that’s where the craziness of Gingrich’s promise lay: It’s not science fiction, but economic fiction.