I'd say that it goes beyond "this works". It's actively required for Presidential candidates to make promises they can't conceivably keep, because the voting public greatly overestimates the President's power and they demand it.
This doesn't excuse deliberately impossible promise-making, of course. But it means that whoever gets elected is going to have a bunch of impossible promises on his record, because anyone who doesn't make them won't win.
I would rephrase that as "Pick the one who will, by your best guess, cause the least damage". Leviathan is, and has always been, a matter of the least possible evil.
Case in point, I'm pretty sure Mitt Romney would have waltzed into a cave in Afghanistan and set off an atomic bomb. He was that obnoxious. At least Obama seems to be half decent at getting less* impressionable young minds soul-searching for their vocation to find "Kill Americans" the obvious choice.
So Obama it was, drones and all.
* Yes, their were no Atomic Bombs in Afghanistan, but let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story.
This doesn't excuse deliberately impossible promise-making, of course. But it means that whoever gets elected is going to have a bunch of impossible promises on his record, because anyone who doesn't make them won't win.