Great Promises Made Again

The AP this morning offers the following title: "Analysis: Democrats Vow to Get Tough." With less than seven weeks to go until the election, Ds are adopting the JFK playbook. Those who remember Camelot for what it was will remember that Kennedy ran against the ace anticommunist Nixon by (a) alleging a "missle gap" created by the Eisenhower administration that left the US underarmed against the nuclear USSR; (b) insisting that JFK would be a more effective anticommunist than Nixon.

The missle gap never existed, of course. In fact, it existed even less than WMD in Iraq, for Kennedy didn't even have the support of intelligence data, flawed or unflawed, for the allegation. As to the effectiveness of Kennedy the anticommunist, let's just say that in Cuba and Southeast Asia, things were much diceyer after 1961 than they had been under Ike's steady hand. We'll defer to Christopher Hitchens to evaluate further the Kennedy anticommunist legacy.

But enough history. Now to behavioral science. We nominate "Democrats vow to get tough" for permanent display in the Museum of Perpetually Unfulfilled Promises, along with:

• The check is in the mail.
• I'll respect you in the morning.
• Runs good.
• There's never been water in the basement.
• The assignment was done, but my computer crashed.
• I forgot to put in the quotation marks and footnotes before I printed the paper.
• I can quit anytime.
• Our tanning beds use the latest technology to eliminate the danger of skin cancer.
  
• Yes, we're living in the same apartment and sleeping in one bed, but we're not having sex.
• Using my system, you'll build wealth by buying real estate with no money down.
• That outfit does not make you look fat.
• I just drink socially.
• Our church is really committed to growth.
  
• Adding this formula to each tank of gas will improve your mileage by 20%.
• I just gamble for recreation.
  
• This machine will give you a lean, toned body in just fifteen minutes a day.
• I didn't inhale.
  
• I don't have a racist bone in my body.
  
• This is the natural product that the drug companies don't want you to know about.
• I can't believe that you're that old.
• I am not a crook.
  
• No, I don't think you're naive and credulous. What makes you think that?
  

Gentle readers may offer additional nominations in the comments. N.B. that brilliant singer/songwriter Dave Frishberg did all this first, and we swear that we didn't look up his classic lyrics until after we assembled our list.