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One of my promises is going to be Social Security reform, and you bet, we need to take a trillion dollars out of that $2.4 trillion surplus. Now remember, Social Security revenue exceeds expenses up until 2015. People are going to get paid. But if you're a younger worker, if you're younger, you better hope this country thinks differently, otherwise you're gonna be faced with huge payroll taxes or reduced benefits. And you bet we're gonna take a trillion dollars of your own money and let you invest it under safe guidelines so you get a better rate of return on the money than the paltry 2% that the federal government gets for you today. That's one of my promises. But it's gonna require people to bring both Republicans and Democrats together to get it done. That's what it requires. There was a chance to get this done. It was a bipartisan approach, but it's been rejected. I'm going to bring them together

That's George W. Bush concluding the debate, back in 2000.

Whither bipartisanship? After all, as the soon-to-be president continued, "A promise made is a promise kept." Flash forward to 2004:

BUSH: My biggest disappointment in Washington is how partisan the town is. I had a record of working with Republicans and Democrats as the governor of Texas, and I was hopeful I'd be able to do the same thing.

And we made good progress early on. The No Child Left Behind Act, incredibly enough, was good work between me and my administration and people like Senator Ted Kennedy.

And we worked together with Democrats to relieve the tax burden on the middle class and all who pay taxes in order to make sure this economy continues to grow.

But Washington is a tough town. And the way I view it is there's a lot of entrenched special interests there, people who are, you know, on one side of the issue or another and they spend enormous sums of money and they convince different senators to taut their way or different congressmen to talk about their issue, and they dig in.

I'll continue, in the four years, to continue to try to work to do so.

My opponent said this is a bitterly divided time. Pretty divided in the 2000 election. So in other words, it's pretty divided during the 1990s as well.

We're just in a period -- we've got to work to bring it -- my opponent keeps mentioning John McCain, and I'm glad he did. John McCain is for me for president because he understands I have the right view in winning the war on terror and that my plan will succeed in Iraq. And my opponent has got a plan of retreat and defeat in Iraq.

Iraq. That's where bipartisanship disappeared. Right there. Bush, like Kerry, wants it both ways: to unite the country while dividing the electorate.

Campaign promises either wither in the heat of urgency, or get stuck in the halls of politicking, or vanish amid the confetti of victory celebrations. They're cotton candy. Dandelion seeds. Dust bunnies.

Forget the debates. Everything changes after the election.