The Obama administration's proposed rules improve on the Bush rules and are full of high-minded promises about maintaining "viable" animal populations.
He recognised that high-minded promises made by governments and civic leaders on the need to preserve wildlife were meaningless unless matched by boots on the ground.
The Virginia Legislature's failure mocks all of the high-minded promises of closure uttered in the blood and grief after the tragedy.
Though he has mocked both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama for lapses from their high-minded promises of postpartisanship, he said he didn't think their current skirmishes were "being conducted on the scale that Bush conducted things, or even the Clintons; I don't think it has the same true viciousness and contempt".
And while Bloomberg has spoken to the better angels of our nature, that doesn't necessarily mean that he has lived up to all his admirably high-minded promises.
Still, School in a Box, for all its high-minded promise, faces real challenges.
His inaugural speech in November resonated with high-minded purpose, with promises to end the "culture of impunity".
These tweets, these high-minded examples of the promise of Twitter, aren't the meat that made the service stick for frequent users.
And when asked if his approach has helped open the campaign to charges that it has abandoned its promises of high-minded politics, Mr. Axelrod can show flashes of indignation, arguing that Mr. Obama's opponents have played a role since the primaries, if not since the start of his presidency.
The duo specializes in a high-minded variant of the slow jam: the lyrics promise eternal love, but the plush, leisurely grooves seem made to accompany something that won't last quite that long.
Why, then, would Americans fed up with the two party system entrust their loyalties to a nascent movement that promises that this time, this time, a high-minded, bipartisan elite will get things right?
