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My question to Americans is this: Can you trust elected officials to make due on their promises they make when they run?

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The non-partisan answer is: Of course not. It takes an astonishing degree of naiveté to believe any professional politician's campaign promises.

That said, I don't know if it's entirely fair to blame Obama for flip-flopping on Net neutrality: remember there was an appeals court decision slapping down the FCC's silly regs in between. That left the FCC with less room for regulatory adventurism. Also the FCC is nominally, at least, an independent FedGov agency and not part of the executive branch in the same way that DoD, DoE, DoT, etc. are.

It is fair to blame Obama for flip-flopping on other promises, such as retroactive immunity for companies that illegally opened their networks to NSA spying. He told me in December 2007 that he did not support it: http://news.cnet.com/Technology-Voters-Guide-Barack-Obama/21...

Then, after getting the Dem nomination wrapped up, Obama flip-flopped and embraced it: http://www.cnet.com/news/obama-flip-flops-on-telecom-immunit...

There are very few areas where a politician can single-handely make changes. So even if Obama did want to enact Net Neutrality law---and I don't know if he still does---then he'd have to convince congress to pass a bill. Obama has had limited pull over congress, even within his own party, and on an issue where so many congresspeolpe have been bought by industry, Obama's going to have even less pull.

Congresspeople get elected by campaign dollars, not by the laws they enact or fail to enact.

Each elected official has limited power. A President can expend all his/her political capital on just one piece of legislation and still fail to pass it--or pass it, but in a severely watered-down form. Even after a law is passed or an executive order given, the courts may eviscerate it (which is and should be within the judiciary's power).

Thus, it often happens that a candidate makes a promise, fully intending to fulfill it, but is unable to as a result of his/her limited power. Knowing as much, perhaps candidates should make much more modest promises. Except that would be campaign suicide in most cases. The rules of the game incentivize and reward over-promising. So even if a candidate is motivated purely by a desire to serve the public s/he must over-promise in order to be given the opportunity to serve.

But this doesn't even look like that. Not even a watered down bill or attempt at one seems to have been documented... or at least it wasn't newsworthy.

You don't necessarily see every policy initiative a President tries to undertake. Often, policy initiatives begin in private consultation between executive staff, legislators, lawyers, and lobbyists. Sometimes, it becomes clear from those private consultations that the policy initiative cannot succeed. When that happens, it typically doesn't serve the President to publicly proclaim that failure.

So it's quite possible (and I believe probable) that the Obama administration tried to do net neutrality, but ran into some kind of wall before the policy went very far.

If that's possible, it's equally possible that it's because they accepted campaign contributions from Comcast, one of the larger violators of net neutrality. Furthermore, is it not possible that they made it all up so that Comcast would give them a large contribution?

While I don't like to go for conspiracy theories, I would like to point out that these are about as likely as the Obama administration actually intending to improve network neutrality.

Nope. Politicians running for executive office frequently make promises to do things they don't actually have the constitutional authority to do, but are sometimes able to wield their influence to accomplish. Politicians running for legislative office can't promise anything but priorities because they can't do anything by themselves.

Why is that a "question to Americans"? I would assume that any "elected official" would be subject to this. The question, as worded, implies that American elected officials are less trusted than elected officials elsewhere.

I think it's worth keeping the question narrow in order to keep discussion focused on the topic at hand. Other countries have different sets of laws around elected officials, lobbying, campaign contributions and so on that probably give rise to somewhat different behavior for different reasons. I don't think that focus implies that the US has the least-trustworthy politicians.

Not when they depend utterly on campaign contributions. This "pivot" is unsurprising given that FCC commissioners are appointed by the President and Comcast is one of the President's largest campaign contributors*

*via its employees, PACs, and owners. See: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00009638

No, which makes the entire process rather dubious. If I can't trust the campaign platform, what exactly am I basing my vote on?

Not to say politicians don't lie (Obama included), but they also change their minds.

now that's something a politician would say

Sounds like something Keynes would say too. And anyone else who is able to change their answers when the inputs change...

Most humans change their minds, and presidents are not an exception. But they also consitute an special case, they were voted based on their promises (ideally) and if you go back on your word (or make things worse as I think is the case) there should be consequences. Or at least people shouldn't sit idle while being lied at.

Mind-changing is great, as long as the person comes out and says, "I changed my mind because this and such, I previously thought X because of A, B, and C, but now because of D, E, and F I have come to see that Y is correct."

I can't recall ever seeing a politician saying it like this. They treat it more like a Ministry of Truth exercise wherein they pretend that they always believed Y.

My favorite example of a politician reversing a position on which they campaigned, and actually explaining why they changed their position, is this: http://youtu.be/2y05XmZlF44

I suppose the whole Center-Of-Attention-In-Washington-DC thingy might do a thing or two to your perception.

"Monarchy Where We Swap Out The King Every Couple Years" has a much less free ring to it than the almighty "Democracy", now doesn't it? Much more accurate though.

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