Opinion | Want to Know What Trump Will Do? Listen to What He Says.

One of the most enduring bits of folk wisdom about American politics is the notion that a promise made on the campaign trail is almost never a promise kept. The only thing you can count on from a politician, and especially a presidential candidate, is that you can’t count on anything.

This isn’t actually true. There is, in fact, a strong connection between what a candidate says on the campaign trail and what a president does in office.

In his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton stressed jobs, unemployment, taxes and health care — encapsulated in his campaign’s refrain: “It’s the economy, stupid.” He followed through, in the first two years of his administration, with a proposed economic stimulus bill, a proposed health-care-reform bill and an upper-income tax increase.

George W. Bush, in his 2000 campaign, emphasized educational reform and tax cuts, and followed through in the first months of his administration with No Child Left Behind and a large, upper-income tax cut.

Barack Obama, in his 2008 campaign, stressed health care, jobs and tax cuts for the middle-class. He followed through with an economic stimulus bill — which included, among many other things, a middle-class tax cut — and a large, ambitious health care bill that eventually became the Affordable Care Act.

Even Donald Trump, not principally known for telling the truth, acted on the promises of his 2016 campaign. He promised, for example, to build a wall on the border with Mexico and he tried to build a wall on the border with Mexico. He promised to ban Muslim immigrants from entering the United States and he tried to ban Muslim immigrants from the United States. Trump’s overt racism in office, his confrontational posture toward North Korea and Iran and even his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election were all also presaged by his rhetoric on the campaign trail.