Lori Falce: Stop believing campaign promises

It is a time-honored staple of sitcoms and school-set movies that kids are gullible, especially when it comes to elections.

There has never been a television or film representation of a student body presidential race that didn’t include the most outlandish of campaign promises.

Perhaps the best comes from the 2004 film “Napoleon Dynamite.” One candidate, the popular girl Summer, offers new pop machines in the cafeteria and glitter lip gloss in the girls’ bathrooms. The underdog, Pedro, makes a simple but epic promise: “Vote for me, and all of your wildest dreams will come true.”

From “Leave It to Beaver” to “Boy Meets World” to the recent Netflix series “The Politician,” school politics is shown to be just as full of impossible campaign promises as grown-up government.

The problem with this is that Hollywood ascribes all of our worst virtues to our children.

Do you remember junior high or high school? Do you remember the cutthroat world of student government? Probably not.

In one way, student elections are very much like their deadly serious adult counterparts. They are largely popularity contests more than sober assessments of character and ability. It is no surprise that the ballots for homecoming court and class officers can have a lot in common.

What is more outlandish is the idea that a high school junior could get away with promising to replace the cafeteria with a Chipotle or abolish math without the principal jumping in to outline the perimeter of the student body presidential powers.

And kids realize that. Kids tend to recognize sarcasm and satire when they see it.

When watching “The Simpsons” with my son recently, we saw an episode where Bart ran for class president, making rash promises and handing out cupcake bribes, only to forget to vote just like the majority of the students, leaving the class nerd to win with just two ballots in the box.

“That wouldn’t really happen,” my kid said. “If you remembered to bring in cupcakes, you wouldn’t forget to vote for yourself.”

Good point. So why do we think kids would fall for all this? Because we fall for it.

Every election — local to presidential — is packed with campaign promises that are just as ridiculous as karaoke in the school library. Every “I will” should come with a small asterisk and a footnote that says, “If Congress lets me. I can’t do this on my own. Even if my party is in power, there’s a lot I can’t get done without legislative cooperation. Let’s be honest, this is all fantasy football at this point.”

And on some level, we know that. We know that a presidential promise — be it universal health care or a great big wall — isn’t a blood oath. It’s a daydream. But we not only buy in, we will treat them like contracts, as President George H.W. Bush discovered. “Read my lips: No new taxes” he declared as a candidate. After he reneged, he found himself a one-term president.

What if we pushed for campaigns with no promises? Instead, let’s have goals and ideas.

Kids aren’t gullible. We shouldn’t be either.