Not trying to disagree with that, but there is an inherent assumption in there that we know how to fix the economy. Would that it were that simple.
Is the one term thing really a promise? It sounds more like stating political reality. He didn’t say he wouldn’t run again if the economy wasn’t fixed.
He promised to post all bills for public viewing for either 3 days or 5 days before signing them into law. He failed on this one. Which I find really odd. I mean all he had to do was wait a few days. Certainly not anything he can blame anyone else for.
You’re right. He promised to lose if he did run. 
You can parse that all day long as to whether it was a promise or a prediction. Either way, you’ll see it in Romney campaign ads.
I’m sure he thinks he does.
n. promise to end “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” - Check
Promise to redistribute the wealth: trying like hell, so I give him an A+ for effort.
Slightly more than “parsing”. There is a significant difference in failing to keep a promise versus being wrong in a prediction.
Except for the part where he says: “One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable.”
That makes it a “promise”?
Your right it was a dumb thing to say and that Romney will no doubt get some mileage out of it. Not really sure what it has to do with the thread though. The statement wasn’t a promise by Obama to do or not do anything.
Yes.
“If I don’t have this done in three years…”
Emphasis added. “Done”. Past tense of “to do”.
It’s a prediction about what he is going to do, not some vague prediction about something external to him that may or may not happen.
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When did he promise that?
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Not even you believe he’s trying.
Meh, don’t really want to spend more time on a semantic argument, but I read it as a prediction of what voters will do depending on whether or not he’s fixed the economy.
No one seriously believes that Obama meant he wasn’t going to run again under any circumstances, do they? Other than LBJ, when was the last time an incumbent president opted out of seeking re-election? Barring a death in office here, an assassination there, or pre-FDR presidents who followed the two-term example of George Washington and didn’t run again, I got all the way back to William McKinley before I stopped looking for one.
C’mon!!
[citation needed]
Like I said, maybe he meant that he’d promise to lose if he ran.
What he clearly promised, though, is that he’d be “done” in 4 years wrt to the economy. Now, it’s hard to know exactly what it means to be “done”, but does anyone think if he was asked if he was done that he’d say “yes”? Do the American people generally think he’s “done”? Unlikely.
Turned America into an Islamic Republic that institutes Sharia law at every level of government? No, Obama has failed there.
Oh, wait, that wasn’t an Obama campaign promise. That’s what conservatives promised Obama would do.
For the record, I think he meant that if he wasn’t done, then he wouldn’t be re-elected, hence “one term proposition”, but I don’t think he meant he wouldn’t run again, and I don’t think he “clearly promised” anything specific in that quote. He was careful to be vague, but I agree that it was still a stupid thing to say.
People already mentioned the Bin Laden thing, but I just wanted to reiterate it. During one of the debates with McCain, he specifically pledged that if he had actionable intelligence that Osama was in Pakistan, he would use force to remove him. McCain specifically said he would not.
And Obama followed through on this one.