Promises, Promises : Can you use ‘politician’ and ‘truth’ in the same sentence without laughing? Think about it. We are annoyed when they lie . . . and when they’re honest. No wonder we hunger for fresh faces.

They break their word--and frequently. They promise not to raise taxes, then raise them. They vow that “our boys” will not fight in foreign wars, then deploy them. They swear they would never, ever womanize, then shrug haplessly when we find Donna Rice in their Washington townhouse.

Politicians ask us to trust them, to rely on them, to believe in them. Then they treat our faith cavalierly, scarcely blinking when they break their promises, peddling excuses rather than asking for forgiveness.

Campaigns have become virtual pledge-a-thons. Striving to please everyone, candidates commit to balance the budget, shrink the deficit, fix the health-care system, reform welfare and put more cops on the streets. They know the hard realities of partisan politics may preventthem from fulfilling many of these vows, but they promise, promise, promise anyway--because polls and consultants tell them that’s what we want to hear. And because we, the people, tend to forgive--or, more often, forget.

Indeed, history shows that voters often reward candidates who make appealing--if unrealistic--promises. By contrast, politicians who dispense more honest--and less optimistic--predictions for the future tend to suffer for their candor at the polls.

Voters may bear some blame in this waltz of deceit: As long as we keep rewarding bad behavior, we’re likely to get more of it.

Recently, Gov. Pete Wilson joined the broken promise club, reneging on his pledge to complete a second term as governor. Just 11 weeks after his $2-million inaugural celebration, Wilson declared he has a “duty” to run for President and formed a committee to help him do so.

As he travels the campaign trail, the governor has already faced questions about why he changed his mind and whether he broke his word. Will voters ratify his thinking or exact revenge come election day? It’s hard to say. What’s more engrossing, in any case, are the broader causes and consequences of promise-breaking.

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Some observers believe voters expect candidates to tease them by saying things they don’t really mean. Campaigns, says Democratic Party strategist Bob Mulholland, “are like dating. You say a lot of nice things when you’re going out, then you get married and suddenly the guy gets fat and starts drinking Old Milwaukee beer. It’s just the way things go.”

Others, however, say such conduct breeds distrust. Each time a political vow is betrayed, they say, it nicks the people’s collective faith.

Sissela Bok is a Harvard ethicist and author of “Lying: Moral Choice in Public & Private Life” (Vintage, 1990). She believes public officials, with their high profile and sworn oath of office, have a special responsibility to keep their word and protect “society’s fragile climate of trust.”

“When our leaders break their promises,” Bok says, “it adds to the cynicism and sense of disappointment people feel about politicians and government in general.”

Our nation’s deepening cynicism has been abundantly documented. It dates from the 1960s and ‘70s, when the Vietnam War and Watergate began eroding the public’s belief that government could be trusted. Confidence in government has remained relatively low ever since, dipping still further in the 1990s.

“There is a very deep public frustration with the political class,” says Everett C. Ladd, director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. “People want politicians to say what they mean, mean what they say and keep their promises. They want . . . candor and honesty.”

Analysts say this public disenchantment has nourished the term-limits movement, which aims to fill Congress and statehouses with “citizen legislators”--people seen as separate from the gray blob of predictable, double-talking “career politicians.”

It also has given life to protest candidates such as Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot. Despite his political inexperience, Perot offered a fresh, plain-spoken style and managed to capture nearly one in every five presidential votes in 1992--a remarkable feat. Gen. Colin Powell, who is enjoying a flurry of support for a potential presidential candidacy in 1996, is another beneficiary of public exasperation with the status quo.

“The Perot phenomenon . . . was like a collective scream for help from the people,” said the late political consultant Duane Garrett, whose credentials include Walter Mondale’s 1984 run for President. “People are hungry for someone new, someone sincere, someone who won’t lie to them. Perot--and the Colin Powell boomlet--are evidence of that.”

Texas Treasurer Martha Whitehead might be another example. In her bid for reelection last fall, the Democrat made what might be one of history’s most bizarre campaign promises: She vowed to abolish her own job if returned to office. The pledge was dramatized in a remarkable TV ad. One moment, Whitehead stood in front of the Texas Capitol building; the next, her image vanished as she promised to wipe out the treasurer’s office.

Whitehead won and kept her pledge, persuading the Legislature to abolish the treasury: “The naysayers said this was all a political tactic,” Whitehead’s representative says, “but it wasn’t. She kept her promise, just like she said she would.”

Many other campaign promises, however, wind up on the post-election ash heap along with the pizza cartons, leaving many voters feeling cheated. It wasn’t always this way.

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Before the turn of the century, campaign pledges were of little consequence. Presidential candidates could say one thing in Philadelphia and say the opposite the next day in New York, confident that there were few watchdogs tracking their remarks.

As the reach of the media has grown, however, politicians have become increasingly vulnerable to reporters playing the game of “gotcha”--sniffing out broken promises and then broadcasting them in the morning papers. Opponents, meanwhile, use the flip-flops as fodder for attacks on a politician’s character. President Clinton, for example, was derided as “Slick Willie” for his reputation as a waffler.

Some candidates get nailed for promises they never actually made--among them, Herbert (“A chicken in every pot”) Hoover. In the 1932 presidential race, foes circulated caricatures of Hoover covered with feathers and boiling in a pot. Also popular were buttons reading “No chicken, no pot, no Hoover: Vote FDR.”

It was a great line, but the chicken promise was invented by Democrats and never uttered by poor old Hoover.

Despite the perils of promise-making, candidates have become ever more addicted to the habit. Some observers attribute this to the rising influence of special-interest groups, each of which extracts its own pledge from donation-desperate candidates. As for promises made to the general public, today’s politicians can use sophisticated polls and focus groups to find out exactly what voters are thinking--and then craft promises to woo them.

“There is a strong temptation in the heat of battle to give the public what the research says the public wants,” says consultant Darry Sragow, who managed Democrat John Garamendi’s failed run for California governor last year. “The voters want specifics--they want to know where a candidate stands. That pushes the candidate to walk on the slippery slope and say things he may not mean after election day.”

It is easy to see why politicians engage in such behavior. American voters have shown an affinity for candidates who make enticing, if disingenuous, promises. On the other hand, the public often rejects those whose message is more sincere--and bleak. Walter Mondale is a case in point.

As the Democratic nominee for President in 1984, Mondale looked at the nation’s crushing deficit and concluded that he would be compelled to raise taxes if elected. He announced his grim conclusion at the Democratic National Convention: “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes,” Mondale said, “and so will I. He won’t tell you; I just did.”

While laudable on principle, Mondale’s truthfulness was a major turnoff: He lost every state but his own, Minnesota. Bottom line? You’re not likely to get elected by doling out the castor oil.

“Voters engage in a certain amount of self-delusion,” says Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. “They want politicians to tell the truth, but they don’t want to hear that taxes are going up and they don’t want to hear the ‘S-word’ for sacrifice.”

Susan Estrich, presidential campaign manager for Democrat Michael S. Dukakis in 1988, puts it this way: “Candidates who are honest generally get screwed.”

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So how can this cycle be broken? Some experts say voters must lower their expectations about what a politician can deliver and accept that not all policy positions can or should be distilled into 30-second TV ads. Instead of engaging in denial, this argument goes, voters should grow up, acknowledge the nation’s complex problems and allow elected officials to take a thoughtful, deliberative approach in tackling them.

Others say the media and the structure of modern campaigns must change: “It’s unthinkable in today’s environment for a candidate to not take stands and make commitments,” says Thomas Patterson, a political scientist at Syracuse University. “You won’t get elected by saying, ‘Hang in there, let me think about it, wait and see.’ The press will call you ‘indecisive’ or ‘wishy-washy.’ ”

Ken Khachigian, a speech writer for former President Ronald Reagan, says the answer lies in leadership.

“I wrote a memo to Ronald Reagan back in 1982, and it said, ‘You’ve got to lead the polls, not read the polls,’ ” says Khachigian, now a senior adviser to Wilson. “It’s the duty of a statesman to educate the public, to defend his positions. That’s leadership, and people support Presidents who demonstrate it.”

Even for popular Presidents, however, promise-making can be a risky business. Reagan, for instance, made voters happy by keeping his word and, despite Mondale’s campaign prediction, refusing to raise taxes. But his popularity plunged during the Iran-Contra scandal when the public began to wonder if he had violated his pledge to never cut deals for the release of hostages.

As for President George Bush, he crumpled under the weight of one of history’s most notorious broken promises--”Read my lips: No new taxes.” Bush made that vow repeatedly during the 1988 campaign, and even though he had compelling reasons for breaking it once he was in office, Bush suffered mightily for it, losing to Bill Clinton.

“It was the nature of the promise that killed him,” says Mary Matalin, who served as political director of the 1992 Bush campaign. “It was a high-profile promise made by a man known for high integrity and honesty. [Breaking] it created a big credibility problem.”

Clinton, too, has been haunted by pledges made and thus far unfulfilled, further cementing his image as a man of iffy character. On issues ranging from Haitian refugees to gays in the military, from a middle-class tax cut to health-care reform, Clinton has broken his word or otherwise failed to deliver.

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Fortunately for the President, voters do not always extract revenge for promises not kept. It largely depends, experts say, on the nature of the sin and the effect it has on the populace. Break a substantive, unequivocal pledge that directly affects people’s lives--like “read my lips”--and you invite the public’s wrath. Promises related to personal ambition tend not to be such a big deal.

Voters also lean toward forgiveness when circumstances change, as President Franklin Roosevelt learned. Campaigning for reelection in 1940, Roosevelt pledged, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” A short time later, U.S. troops were engaged in World War II. “But after Pearl Harbor, not many Americans remembered or cared that Roosevelt broke his word,” recalls pollster Mervin Field.

Political scientists applaud the public’s propensity to pardon. Oftentimes, they say, what looks like a broken promise may in fact be the honest evolution of a politician’s thinking--or a sensible political compromise.

Indeed, scholars say the real threats to a smooth-functioning democratic process are not promise-breakers, but ideologues who are unwilling to bend when legislative realities require it. Says Richard Brody, professor emeritus of political science at Stanford University: “Remember, the opposite of compromise is gridlock. If you don’t move, you won’t get anything done.”

Wilson’s broken promise is of a different sort. During last year’s campaign for reelection, the governor was asked on numerous occasions whether he would serve out a second term if returned to office. Repeatedly, he replied that he would.

But now Wilson says things have changed. With the withdrawal of several other GOP contenders from the presidential race, Wilson contends he has a “duty” to run, and says he was urged to do so by important people with lots of money to spend on his campaign.

How this explanation will play with the electorate is thus far unknown. In one poll, two-thirds of California’s registered voters said the governor should not run for President. And many fellow Republicans are outraged that Wilson would pursue the presidency and, if elected, leave the Statehouse in the hands of Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis for two full years.

To solve the Davis problem, Wilson is orchestrating a 1996 ballot initiative to require a special election if a governor quits. His advisers, meanwhile, predict Californians will forgive and feel proud that their governor has sufficient stature to be a contender for President of the United States.

“I think there is tremendous tolerance in America for public figures who have said one thing and done another,” Khachigian says. “I don’t think his intention was to deceive and I don’t think this is an issue that is of consuming importance in people’s lives.”

But some observers believe the broken vow has made Wilson vulnerable to opponents who will attack his credibility by describing his career as a series of flip-flops on key issues--taxes and affirmative action, to name a few.

“If you’re going to break your word, you have to give voters a significant explanation,” says political analyst William Schneider. “You don’t tack it up on the bulletin board, you don’t shrug your shoulders and you don’t merely say you have a ‘duty’ to run for President.”

Just to be safe, Wilson might want to follow the advice of Bok, the Harvard ethicist. She suggests that elected officials who feel the need to break their word first ask the public’s permission.

Clinton tried this technique. Campaigning for a fifth term as governor of Arkansas, he vowed to sit out the 1992 presidential race. After election day, however, the White House beckoned. So Clinton toured the state, begging his constituents for a “psychological sense of release” from his pledge.

It worked. But now he has all those other promises to worry about.