Marketing gimmickry position on prescription drugs:

Promote generic drugs, allow drug reimportation, and allow Medicare to negotiate
directly with drug companies.

What Obama did:

Today's NY Times front page reconfirmed the news that President Obama has made a back-room deal with the pharmaceutical industry to block any Congressional health care legislation that would allow Medicare or most other parts of the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry or would allow importation of cheaper drugs from Canada.

Marketing gimmickry position on taxes:

The president said he wants to prevent U.S. companies from deferring tax payments by keeping profits in foreign countries rather than recording them at home and called for more transparency in bank accounts that Americans hold in notorious tax havens like the Cayman Islands.

What the President signed into law:

The "fiscal cliff" legislation passed this week included $76 billion in special-interest tax credits for the likes of General Electric, Hollywood and even Captain Morgan. But these subsidies weren't the fruit of eleventh-hour lobbying conducted on the cliff's edge -- they were crafted back in August in a Senate committee, and they sat dormant until the White House reportedly insisted on them this week...

General Electric and Citigroup, for instance, hired Breaux and Lott to extend a tax provision that allows multinational corporations to defer U.S. taxes by moving profits into offshore financial subsidiaries. This provision -- known as the "active financing exception" -- is the main tool GE uses to avoid nearly all U.S. corporate income tax.

What the President said:

No family making less than $250,000 will see "any form of tax increase."

"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

What the President proposes:

Adding insult to injury, the chained CPI also would amount to an across-the-board tax increase on working families.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, switching to a chained CPI would increase taxes by more than $59 billion over the next decade.

More than three-quarters of the new revenue raised by the year 2021 would come from Americans making less than $200,000 a year. Those making between $30,000 and $40,000 would be hit the hardest, while those making more than $1 million would see virtually no change. What about President Obama's promise that there would be no income tax increases for people making less than $250,000 a year?

Marketing gimmickry position on Social Security:

"John McCain's campaign has suggested that the best answer for the growing pressures on Social Security might be to cut cost of living adjustments or raise the retirement age. Let me be clear: I will not do either."

President Obama's new budget:

Mr. Obama's budget will propose a new inflation formula that would have the effect of reducing cost-of-living payments for Social Security benefits...

What do you call an "idealist" who makes a list of promises when he needs your vote, then sits back and leads from the rear until you wind up with the Republican Plan of '94?

If so, in that context, I have to agree that the term "idealist" is much too generous on your part. Not sure I would go quite this far, but definitely too generous. ;o)

Calling these people "idealists" is too generous on your part. I prefer to describe them as "deadenders".