Change: Analyzing President Barack Obama's Campaign Pledge Fulfillment from a Historical Perspective

Abstract

American campaign promises are often disregarded by the public, who employ heuristics over political knowledge to assess whether candidate’s promises translate to actual policy in office. This thesis examines this issue through perhaps the most important office in the American government, the Presidency. Promise fulfillment is already a scarce field of research, and when combined with the single position of the Presidency, there is almost no resoundingly agreed upon theories that govern this field of Presidential Scholarship. By employing a historical and then a quantitative analysis of President Obama, this paper finds that not only do promises have strong correlations to policy, but also promises are an incredibly valuable tool for presidential candidates in their campaigns, and in reelection. This paper finds that, though promises influence many factors of a presidential election, these factors do not compare to power that promise fulfillment has in winning reelections. Presidential reelections of Obama and Reagan provide the basis for substantial value placed on promise fulfillment.