Welcome to your custom -tailored deep dive. We
are just thrilled to have you with us today.
Yeah, absolutely thrilled. So our mission for
this deep dive is to explore the anatomy of a
political promise. We're going to look at how
just six simple words can completely define a
presidential campaign, force a constitutional
crisis, and, you know, ultimately derail a presidency.
It really is an incredible story of political
mechanics. To guide us through it, we are examining
the detailed, the encyclopedic record of one
of the most famous phrases in modern political
history. Read my lips. No new taxes. Exactly.
We're looking at the comprehensive history of
where this phrase came from, the total chaos
it caused inside the White House and its lasting
legacy on global politics. And since we know
you are someone who loves to learn, someone who
wants the full picture without getting completely
overwhelmed by the noise. This is going to be
perfect for you. Definitely. You have almost
certainly heard this famous soundbite before.
It's legendary. But the behind -the -scenes drama,
the frantic speechwriters, the angry phone calls,
the harsh economic realities. That's the real
story. Right. That is where you get this incredible
aha moment about the massive collision between
campaign rhetoric and actual governance. It's
a story about what happens when an unstoppable
political promise meets an immovable economic
reality. Okay, let's unpack this. So to really
understand the weight of those six words, we
need to set the stage. It's 1988. Vice President
George H .W. Bush is running to succeed Ronald
Reagan as president of the United States. Bush
has a serious problem. He has firmly secured
the Republican nomination, sure, but he is trailing
the Democratic nominee. Michael Dukakis. Right.
Trailing Dukakis significantly in the polls.
And beyond just the numbers, Bush is battling
a perception problem. Among conservatives in
his own party, he is viewed as weak and vacillating.
His advisers are, well, they're deeply worried
about a lack of enthusiasm for him in the conservative
wing of the party. And that skepticism didn't
just emerge in a vacuum. You know, if we trace
this back, the catalyst really happened. years
earlier. Back in 1984. Exactly. During the 1984
presidential election, there was this debate
where the Democratic candidate, Walter Mondale,
flat out admitted that if he were elected, taxes
would likely be raised. Which was a moment of
stark honesty. A huge moment of honesty. But
then Bush implied the tax increases might actually
be necessary in the next four years, too. Right.
Which was a huge misstep for his base. President
Reagan immediately asserted that he had absolutely
no plans to raise taxes in his second term. Leaving
Bush scrambling. Completely. It forced Bush to
quickly argue that his own comments had been
misunderstood. But the damage was done. That
1984 exchange led some conservatives to really
begin doubting Bush's dedication to tax cuts.
They weren't sure he was a true believer in the
Reagan economic revolution. Fast forward to the
run -up for the 1988 election. The competition
to succeed Reagan is starting in 1986, and it's
incredibly clear that taxes are going to be the
central issue. Enter Grover Norquist. He's the
head of Americans for Tax Reform. And he had
created this strict no new taxes pledge. He's
aggressively encouraging Republican candidates
to sign it. A large number of congressional candidates
put their names on it. Bush's primary rivals,
Jack Kemp and Pete DuPont, they sign it too.
But Bush initially refuses. He holds out. It
wasn't until 1987 that he eventually caved and
agreed to it. And once he did, his campaign actually
joined the other candidates in using the tax
issue as a weapon to attack Bob Dole. Because
Dole hadn't been clear on the subject. Exactly.
But signing a piece of paper in a primary is
one thing. Making it the absolute centerpiece
of your national campaign in a general election
is another entirely. Which brings us to the drafting
of the 1988 Republican National Convention acceptance
speech down in New Orleans. A crucial moment.
The campaign needs a unifying moment. They desperately
need to energize the right. And as Bush adviser
James Pickett put it, taxes were the one issue
that unified the right and didn't antagonize
anybody else. So they decide to put a firm no
new tax pledge right into the acceptance speech.
The basic idea for the passage came from Jack
Kemp, but the actual words were crafted by leading
speechwriter Peggy Noonan. The drafting process,
however, was a total battleground. There was
incredible internal friction over this specific
phrasing. Some of Bush's advisors felt the language
was just way too strong and completely boxed
them in. The most prominent critic in the room
was his economic advisor, Richard Darman. Right.
Darman was actually one of the architects of
Reagan's 1982 tax increase, and he fully expected
to have a major policy role in the upcoming Bush
White House. When Darman saw the initial draft
of the speech, he literally crossed the phrase
out. Just struck it right out of the text. Yes.
He called it stupid and dangerous. But wait,
if Richard Jarman, a senior economic adviser,
knew this pledge was a ticking time bomb, why
did a seasoned politician like Bush listen to
a PR strategist over his own numbers guy? Because
of the political desperation of the moment, the
campaign was getting entirely different advice
from political strategist Roger Ailes. Ailes
advised keeping the line in the speech. His logic
being what exactly? Well, his logic was that
the pledge was desperately needed to keep conservative
support, especially since the campaign was trying
to position itself overall as centrist to appeal
to the broader electorate. Furthermore, they
hoped this hardline, uncompromising stance would
add an element of toughness to Bush. Directly
countering that lingering perception of him being
weak. Precisely. Darman later argued that in
that moment, the campaign was simply far more
concerned with winning the election than with
actually governing. So the decision is made.
The line stays. On August 18th, 1988, George
H .W. Bush stands up at the convention and delivers
the line. He says, and the Congress will push
me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll
push and I'll say no and they'll push again and
I'll say to them, read my lips, no new taxes.
The delivery was iconic and the immediate impact
was absolutely staggering. The strategy to look
tough and unify the base worked flawlessly. Coming
out of that convention, Bush immediately overtakes
Dukakis. A Gallup poll taken the following week
showed Bush taking a 48 to 44 percent lead. His
favorability ratings shot up by nine points compared
to pre -convention polls. And a nine point jump
in favorability is almost unheard of coming out
of a convention. I put that in perspective for
you. Pollsters who had been tracking elections
since the 1930s were saying they had never seen
a swing like it. Mervyn Field, who was a veteran
California pollster, was quoted at the time declaring
he hadn't seen a favorability swing of that magnitude
since he began looking at polls in 1936. Wow.
Yeah. Another Gallup poll for Newsweek had Bush
up 51 to 42 percent. The six words worked. They
propelled him to the presidency. They won the
campaign. But then January arrives, the inauguration
happens, and the confetti is swept up. Now, the
Bush administration has to actually govern, and
they immediately hit a massive catch -22. The
economic reality sets in. Right. During the campaign,
the figures they used to promise no new taxes
were entirely based on the assumption that the
high rates of economic growth from the late 1980s
would just continue indefinitely throughout his
entire time in office. But the economy had other
plans. It sure did. A recession hit. And by 1990,
you had a declining economy paired with a growth
in mandatory government spending. The result
was that federal budget deficits began to balloon
to alarming levels. This is the ultimate aha
moment about American governance. Bush didn't
just break the pledge because he changed his
mind. He was legally trapped by a prior law.
The Graham -Redmond -Hollings Balanced Budget
Act that mandated deficit reduction. That is
such a critical point. If the government couldn't
agree on how to reduce the deficit, the Graham
-Redmond -Hollings Act would trigger mandatory
sweeping across -the -board cuts. And to reduce
a deficit that size without raising revenue,
without taxes, you only have one option, massive
spending cuts to programs with huge budgets.
Which meant slashing things like Medicare, Social
Security, or national defense. It was political
suicide. Nope. politician, Republican or Democrat,
wanted to touch those programs with a 10 -foot
pole. So a standoff begins. Bush initially presents
Congress with a proposed budget that sticks to
his pledge. It contains those steep spending
cuts and zero new taxes. But Congress is controlled
by Democrats and they dismiss this budget out
of hand. They won't even entertain it. Dead on
arrival. Completely. Negotiations start, but
it becomes glaringly obvious that little to no
progress can be made without some sort of compromise
on taxes. The number simply do not add up without
new revenue. Richard Darman, who, remember, warned
against the pledge and is now the head of the
Office of Management and Budget, along with White
House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, both realize
a compromise is entirely unavoidable. And they
aren't alone in this realization. Other prominent
Republicans like Gerald Ford, Paul O 'Neill and
Lamar Alexander also publicly come out in favor
of a tax increase to solve the crisis. Here's
where it gets really interesting. In late June
of 1990, President Bush releases a statement.
It's carefully worded, but the meaning is unmistakable.
He states that the size of the deficit problem
requires a package that includes several things
like entitlement reform, spending reductions.
And here it is. Tax revenue increases. Tax revenue
increases. Those three words were the undoing
of the six words from New Orleans. Initially,
the administration tried to spin it. They argued
that tax revenue increases didn't necessarily
mean raising the actual tax rates. Maybe it meant
the government would just work to increase overall
taxable income by growing the economy. A bit
of mental gymnastics there. Exactly. But Bush
soon confirmed the blunt truth. Tax increases
were officially on the negotiating table. The
media and political fallout was nuclear. The
very next day, the New York Post ran a giant
headline that simply read, Read my lips, I lied.
The anger was palpable, especially from within
his own party. Some of the most enraged individuals
were fellow Republicans, including House Whip
Newt Gingrich, the Senate leadership, and even
Vice President Dan Quayle. They felt Bush had
single handedly destroyed the Republican Party's
most potent election plank for years to come.
Yeah. And compounding the anger was the fact
that the Republican leadership in Congress wasn't
even consulted before Bush made the deal. It
turned into a bitter open feud within the party.
There is this incredible fly on the wall moment
from the aftermath. Chief of Staff Sununu picks
up the phone to personally give Newt Gingrich
the news about the tax compromise. And Gingrich
is so furious, he just slams the phone down on
him. It was a total fracture of the coalition
that elected him. When Republican Senator Trent
Lott publicly questioned the reversal, Sununu
went to the press and called Lott an insignificant
figure in this process. Ouch. Yeah. And it went
further into the campaign apparatus. Ed Rollins,
the co -chair of the Republican National Committee,
issued a memo instructing Republican members
of Congress to distance themselves from the president.
Which makes perfect sense when you understand
the structural reality of midterm elections.
Ed Rollins is looking at this from the perspective
of party survival. He sends out a memo essentially
saying, if you want to keep your seat in Congress,
run away from the president. And for doing his
job, for trying to save the Republican majority,
he is immediately fired by the White House. Wow.
It shows just how toxic this single sentence
had become. It was destroying careers on both
ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. And the political
damage to the president was catastrophic. Bush
had enjoyed a historic high approval rating of
79 percent early in his term. But by mid -October
of 1990, his approval rating had plunged to 56
percent. As a quick side note, the events of
the Gulf War eventually pushed this issue out
of the news cycle momentarily. Right. The war
changed the focus. Exactly. By February 1991,
following the swift victory in the war, his approval
rating soared to a massive 89 percent. But that
was a temporary mask over a deep structural political
wound. The tax issue was waiting for him. And
that wound became a matter of legal record. On
November 5th, 1990, Bush signed the Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act of 1990. This was the actual
legislation that broke the pledge, and it raised
multiple taxes. This wasn't just a minor administrative
fee adjustment. Not at all. Instead of just tweaking
the margins, this law hit everywhere. The top
income tax bracket went up from 28 % to 31%.
They raised the alternative minimum tax from
21 % to 24%, which essentially ensured wealthy
individuals couldn't use deductions and loopholes
to pay nothing. Capital gains were capped. They
even raised taxes on basic payrolls and excise
taxes. It was sweeping. Very sweeping. While
it did increase access to the earned income tax
credit for low -income families, it limited itemized
deductions for high -income individuals. This
wasn't a minor broken promise. This was a comprehensive
across -the -board tax hike that voters felt
immediately in their wallets. The pledge was
definitively broken in writing. Which brings
us to the reckoning. The 1992 presidential election.
The broken pledge dogged Bush for the entirety
of the campaign, and he faced fierce attacks
from every angle. We must look impartially at
how both the right and the left utilized this
against him because it illustrates the impossible
squeeze he was in. Let's start with the political
right. Pat Buchanan used the broken pledge as
a primary weapon to challenge Bush for the Republican
nomination. On the very day he entered the race,
Buchanan stated that Republicans could no longer
blame everything on liberals. He hammered home
that it wasn't a liberal Democrat who said, read
my lips, no new taxes, and then cut a backroom
deal with big spenders. He was ruthless with
it. Buchanan used the 1988 quote constantly in
television and radio ads during the New Hampshire
primary. playing the audio of Bush's own voice
on a loop. And it worked to a shocking degree.
Buchanan won a surprising 40 % of the vote in
New Hampshire. Winning 40 % against a sitting
incumbent president in a primary is a massive
rebuff. It signals profound weakness and a base
that is actively in revolt. Faced with this intense
pressure from his own party, Bush's initial response
was to logically explain that raising taxes was
essential due to the condition of the economy.
Polling actually showed that most Americans agreed
some tax increases were necessary. The real problem
wasn't the policy itself. It was the total loss
of trust. Recognizing this, Bush changed his
strategy. By the time the primary moved to Georgia,
he began actively apologizing for raising taxes.
He told the public, I did it and I regret it
and I regret it. In an October debate, he repeatedly
called it a mistake, saying he should have held
out for a better deal. But the apologies proved
completely ineffective because as soon as he
pivoted to the general election, the attack came
from the political left. The Democratic nominee,
Bill Clinton, who was running as a moderate,
used the broken pledge to systematically attack
Bush's character and trustworthiness. Using his
own words against him. Exactly. Clinton's campaign
strategist, James Carville, designed a television
commercial that had Bush repeating the read my
lips phrase. It was designed to illustrate a
broken promise, and it is generally regarded
as one of the most devastatingly effective ads
of Clinton's campaign. Despite various scandals
surrounding Clinton at the time, polls showed
the public viewed both men as similar in integrity,
largely because of that singular tax reversal.
Adding another massive layer of complexity to
this dynamic was the entrance of Ross Perot.
Capitalizing on the public's widespread disenchantment
with the status quo and broken promises from
Washington, Perot ran as an independent candidate.
While there has been much speculation about Perot's
specific effect on the race, exit polls show
that he essentially drew votes evenly from both
Bush and Clinton. Ultimately, caught in a vice
between his alienated conservative base, a moderate
Democratic challenger and a populist independent,
Bush lost his bid for reelection. It was the
perfect storm. So what does this all mean? When
historians and political insiders look back at
this sequence of events, how do they interpret
it? There are widely competing interpretations
of what this moment represents in political history.
On one side, you have voices like conservative
talk show host Rush Limbaugh and Republican pollster
Richard Werthlin. Werthlin actually called the
pledge the six most destructive words in the
history of presidential politics. That's a heavy
label. It is. Ed Rollins called it the most serious
violation of a political pledge anyone has ever
made. Even Bush's own White House press secretary,
Marlon Fitzgerald, water called the reversal
the single biggest mistake of the administration.
But not everyone agrees the pledge itself was
the fatal blow, right? Right. Richard Darman,
the advisor who tried to cross the phrase out
in the first place, argued that the reversal
wasn't the central reason for Bush's defeat.
Darman believed the poor economy itself caused
the loss, and the broken pledge merely became
a highly convenient, visible focal point for
the public's broader economic discontent. And
then there's a completely different perspective
from scholars like Daniel L. Ostrander. What
does he say? He argues that Bush's actions were
actually incredibly noble. In this view, Bush
knew breaking the pledge would destroy his political
future, but he deliberately fell on his sword,
taking the political hit for the economic well
-being of the nation. That's a fascinating contrast.
It's either the ultimate political sin or the
ultimate political sacrifice. What's fascinating
here is how the ripple effects of this single
decision reshaped politics for years. Take Newt
Gingrich. As a member of the Congressional Negotiating
Committee, he adamantly refused to endorse Bush's
compromise. He then led... led over 100 Republican
House members in voting against the president's
first budget proposal. This very public act of
defiance made Gingrich a hero to conservatives,
directly propelling him into the leadership role
that drove the Republican Revolution of 1994.
And it fundamentally affected the Democrats,
too. Even after winning the presidency, Bill
Clinton was terrified of the exact same voter
retribution. Early in his first term, confronted
with a larger than expected deficit, Clinton
raised taxes to deal with it. He did this against
the frantic advice of his own aides, who warned
him he was breaking his own campaign promise
of a middle class tax cut. The shadow of read
my lips was hanging heavy over the Oval Office,
dictating strategy across party lines. The phrase
itself lived on, echoing through history as both
a template and a warning. During a Republican
primary debate in New Hampshire in 2000, George
W. Bush, the former president's son, was asked
about his economic plans. The reporter specifically
asked, is this no new taxes, so help me God?
George W. Bush replied, this is not only no new
taxes, this is a tax cut, so help me God. The
echoes went global, too. In 2009, the Irish Minister
for Finance, Brian Lennon Jr., promised not to
raise taxes by saying, read my lips, no tax hikes.
And ahead of the 2019 United Kingdom general
election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson explicitly
evoked the phrase, telling the public, read my
lips, we will not be raising taxes. Though much
like Bush, Johnson reversed his pledge in 2021
by proposing a tax increase to subsidize health
and social care. The phrase is practically a
cursed artifact in democratic politics at this
point. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
this deep dive perfectly encapsulates the dangerous,
almost inevitable friction between campaigning
and governing. Campaigns demand absolute black
and white promises. They demand simple, catchy
slogans that rally a base and project strength.
But actual governance requires navigating a complex,
unpredictable reality. It requires nuance, negotiation,
and the difficult math of compromise. That brings
us back to you, the listener. The next time you
are watching a debate or seeing a political ad
and you hear a candidate make an ironclad, incredibly
catchy promise about the future, you now know
the historical precedent. You know the institutional
traps that lie in wait. And you know exactly
what happens when an immovable pledge crashes
headfirst into economic reality. This raises
an important question to leave you with today.
When a political pledge becomes mathematically
impossible to keep without severely harming the
country's economy, what is the true mark of a
leader? Is it better to stubbornly keep your
word to the voters, even if it means sinking
the ship? Or is it better to break your promise
to save the ship, knowing full well it will sink
your own career in the process? It's the ultimate
political paradox, something to mull over as
you watch the next election unfold. Thank you
for joining us on this deep dive, and we'll catch
you next time.