But the Presidential Platform Index didn’t let me forget this time. It sat there like a dusty bookshelf I accidentally opened, full of receipts. And by receipts, I mean: actual campaign platforms. Pages and pages of “what I’ll do when I’m elected” from people who did (or didn’t) win. And most of it? Forgotten. Buried under headlines, scandals, red ties and blue slogans.
Reading those old platforms… god, it felt like eavesdropping on a bunch of overconfident exes who swore they’d change. One said they’d invest in rural broadband (did they?). Another promised to end wars “once and for all” (uh, no). Somebody literally wrote they’d heal the country “like a family therapist with a budget surplus.” That one made me laugh out loud and then immediately want to cry.
Look, I’m not trying to be cynical. Or maybe I am, I don’t know anymore. It’s hard not to be when you compare what they said to what actually happened. Like this piece from The New York Times—they track what promises got kept. Spoiler: not all of them. Not even most.
What hit me most is how *similar* they all are. The rhetoric, I mean. Whether they lean left or right or whatever’s trending that year, everyone wants “a strong America,” “a better future,” “freedom for all,” and of course, “the economy to work for you.” The words are elastic. They stretch to fit whatever meaning you want. And that’s the scary part. That you can read two platforms from two parties and, if you stripped the names, you might not know who’s who.
I don’t have a solution. I’m not even sure reading these platforms is helping my mental health, to be honest. But it’s something. It’s at least *trying* to remember. Because if we’re gonna keep doing this—keep choosing leaders with our fingers crossed and our memories wiped—then maybe we owe it to ourselves to look back first.
This site, the Index, doesn’t yell at you. It doesn’t beg for donations or scream about doomsday. It just puts the words out there. In plain sight. Like: here’s what they said. You decide what it meant. It’s not sexy. It’s not trending on TikTok. But it feels weirdly important.
Maybe we’ll never get the leaders we were promised. Maybe that’s just part of the deal. But we can at least hold on to the promises. Not because they’re sacred—but because they’re proof. That we were told something. That someone stood on a stage, or a Zoom call, or a whistle-stop bus, and told us what they’d do.
And maybe, just maybe, next time we’ll remember. Even if just a little.
