The American political landscape heavily incentivizes deception. Candidates routinely win elections by making spectacular guarantees they have absolutely zero capacity to fulfill. We accept this as the standard cost of doing business in a democracy. We shrug and move on … it is time to treat political deception like professional malpractice.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani built a successful campaign on several massive guarantees. Two of the most prominent promises were to implement a rent freeze and to provide free bus service across the boroughs. Voters mobilized behind these specific deliverables and cast their ballots, trusting that these policies were viable and ready for execution.
The reality has been predictably different. The administration is now navigating the complex realities of building distress and real estate economics, leaving tenants vulnerable to continued rent increases. Furthermore, the mayor recently conceded that the ambitious free-bus program is simply off the table for the current budget year. The money is absent, and the logistical support is missing. Voters who relied on those transit and housing promises are now left holding the bag.
The problem runs much deeper than one mayor or one city. Our entire electoral system actively rewards candidates for making the most outlandish claims possible. A candidate who offers a pragmatic, mathematically sound vision will almost always lose to a candidate promising the moon. The winner gets the office, the power and the massive public platform.
When promises inevitably collapse under the weight of reality, politicians face no personal or professional liability. They might lose a subsequent election years later, but frequently, they do fine and win re-election anyway because partisan echo chambers insulate them from real accountability.
Our ideological silos make this even worse. Because voters are often trapped in environments of homogeneous thought, they rarely hear robust critiques of their preferred candidate’s promises. If we fostered genuine viewpoint diversity and heterodoxy in our political discourse, these impossible promises would be challenged immediately. We allow candidates to pander without pushback, creating a feedback loop where the biggest liar wins.
Voters suffer the consequences of broken promises while politicians continue to collect taxpayer-funded salaries.
This double standard is unacceptable. Doctors, engineers and accountants can lose their livelihoods for malpractice or fraud, but elected officials managing trillions of dollars and making decisions governing the lives of millions of people somehow operate free from equivalent professional standards.
We must change the incentive structure by introducing personal liability for political promises. Politicians should be required to hold a professional license to govern. We could have this managed by a nonpartisan, independent ethics board. When a candidate makes a definitive campaign promise, it should be recorded as a binding professional contract with the public.
If a politician breaks a core campaign promise, voters should have the mechanism to file a formal grievance. The ethics board would then conduct a transparent review, and I recommend three specific consequences for political malpractice:
■ First, we need mandatory financial clawbacks. If a promise is broken, the politician’s campaign organization must be heavily fined, with the funds redirected to community services directly affected by the failure.
■ Second, politicians found guilty of deliberately misleading the public should face an immediate suspension of their campaign fundraising abilities. They should lose the tools they use to spread further messaging until they have demonstrated accountability.
■ Third, and most important, egregious or repeated deception must result in the permanent revocation of their license to hold office. If a clinical social worker loses their credential for lying, they cannot practice. If a politician willfully deceives the electorate to gain power, they should be permanently decertified and disqualified from appearing on any future ballot.
American politics will remain a contest of overpromising until we change the incentives; we cannot rely on shame alone. Voters deserve leaders who honor their word. The rest of us deserve a political system that finally imposes the same rules on its participants that it imposes on everyone else. Until we hold politicians personally liable for broken promises, the incentive to lie will remain too strong to resist.
We expect honesty from our mechanics, our teachers and our physicians. We demand accountability when they fail. We must apply those same standards to the people running our government. We need to dismantle the incentive to lie by making the consequences of deception too painful for any politician to risk. It is time to make accountability personal.
Nafees Alam is a professor in social work at Boise State University. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
