So, right, how dare the government hold someone to their word? You're basically advocating lying and not honoring your promises.
BTW - I basically make a living honoring promises and contracts, otherwise we wouldn't have customers ;)
Yes, obviously. There are situations where you ought to lie. The typical example: "Are there any Jews in your basement?"
Decency is more than keeping to the words, sometimes it even requires you break them to keep the spirit of promise. We generally give promises contingent on implied good behaviour from the other parties. When others break their promises the stack built on that mutual honour collapses.
And I'm fine living in the world where that's the way people treat promises, I massively prefer it to the world where people can be tricked into promising something and then have to keep to it when it turns out to be abhorrent.
It's actually possible to lie or break a promise.
Sometimes the ethics to do so are stronger than the ethics to not do so.
If you think he chose to break the wrong one, then that might be a valid point, but you seem to be implying that if you were in that position you'd keep both o_O