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Why broken promises matter
A post by JJ, a 17 year old blogger
One of the things I really hate is broken promises.
Trust.
I like that I can trust people and when one of your closest friends break that faith, things just go downhill.
Yesterday, when I was lamenting about the fact that I’d be alone again on campfire nite, because honestly, going with Ed and Jo is awkward since I want to leave them alone for some ‘couple’ time but Joanne will feel guilty and try to include me and I know it’s half-hearted.
So if I have some other friend to go with, she’d be at ease. My other group of friends can’t be relied for social outings so I didn’t ask them.
Then Foo told me he’d accompany me. I knew that he might waver so I made me promise me.
Like, “Promise ah? Sure? Don’t run of to your pet sisters again and ffk me.”
And he said, “Yeah lah. I won’t do that 1.”
Maybe I insisted he promise me so much was because I already knew that I couldn’t trust him too much on this. But still I chose to believe him.
Then today, he comes and tells me that he hope I won’t be mad if he’s too preoccupied that night with another friend he’s going with.
“Eh Jia Ying, don’t angry if I don’t choi you that night because I with Po Yee.”
WTF...
I don’t blame his friend. The fact that I might not have a friend to go with me isn’t such a big issue, especially after I found out that Kristin and Pei Qi might be going as well.
It was the fact that he broke the promise that pissed me of so bad. And he didn’t even think he was in the wrong at first.
Heck, I’ve definitely broken a few promises in the whole seventeen years of my life.
But he had a choice and he was very well aware of what he was doing. It wasn’t an accident, it wasn’t just a little white lie or a small slip up.
It was a complete betrayal of trust.
Sure, he said he was joking afterwards, and that he was still going to pei me as well, but the very fact that he even uttered that sentence meant that he actually thought about it and anticipated it.
Yet, he still just broke the promise. Consciously, knowingly and deliberately, he broke it.
Sorry no cure, and even now, I suspect the sincerity in his apology. How am I supposed to know if he’s joking about that too? After all, he loves to joke.
Broken promises just plain suck.
Hurt,
~*JJ*~ from Malaysia
Broken promise will probably benefit Obama
Barack Obama wants to campaign on his ideals, but he also wants to win. Indeed, if you want to gauge the gap between his principles and his pragmatics, just follow the money.Ideally, Obama would now be honoring a promise he made in 2007. He vowed that, if he became the Democratic nominee, he would run his autumn race in accordance with the federal reform rules that have guided presidential elections since 1976. He said he'd stop raising money from private donors, and instead finance his race with $85 million from the federal kitty, as long as his Republican opponent did the same. Hence, a level playing field. And John McCain agreed to those terms 15 months ago.
Obama articulated his promise last November. When a reform group asked him whether he'd take public financing in 2008, he replied in writing: "Yes. . . . My plan requires both major-party candidates to agree on a [private] fund-raising truce. . . . If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."
Well, that pledge has since become highly inconvenient, which is why Obama repeatedly signaled this spring that he intended to weasel out of it. And last Thursday, he did. He told his supporters in an online message that he intends to build "the first general-election campaign that's truly funded by the American people," which is high-road spin for saying, "I intend to become the first candidate to successfully privatize my autumn campaign since Richard Nixon did it in 1972."
The pragmatics seem obvious: Why should Obama agree to a level playing field - $85 million for him, the same for McCain - when he can simply re-stoke his private fund-raising juggernaut for the final round and tilt the field in his favor? Why should Obama volunteer to disarm himself? That would be like the Phillies agreeing to release Chase Utley and Ryan Howard in the interests of providing the Mets with a level playing field in the National League East.
Compared with the private-donor money that Obama can raise on his own for the fall, $85 million in taxpayers' money is chump change. He has already racked up roughly $300 million for the primary season (a record haul for a candidate), and party insiders say he could raise $500 million more for the 10-week sprint to Election Day.
McCain, by contrast, cannot touch that kind of money. Republicans are demoralized, and a lot of conservative donors don't trust him. He's stuck now with two choices, neither of which is attractive: He can take the public money (and be overwhelmed by Obama's private money), or he can follow Obama's lead and refuse the public money (and wind up spending his time going to fund-raisers - unlike Obama, who garners much of his money on the Internet).
There's a downside to Obama's decision, at least in theory. He has indeed gone back on his word. He made a promise, and he broke it. He has styled himself a reformer, yet he has made a pragmatic decision in the style of a typical politician. The McCain people started hammering on that theme when Obama was first signaling his intentions, and now they're trying to frame the money flip-flop as a character issue.
But the columnist concludes for American voters its no big deal adding:
"So maybe Obama's halo has been dented a bit, by his own hand, but most Democratic voters are in no mood to indulge idealism. In their hunger for victory, they're willing to swallow a lot"
Surely a few American voters who feel disdain for promise-breakers, like JJ who wrote the touching blog post above, might be less willing that this cynical Phillie columnist to give Obama such an unqualified pass...especially when they learn that he is a chronic promise- breaker.
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