First, up to now, I never skipped non-Presidential elections. And for the record, and to assuage the concern of commenters elsewhere, I do still vote in local elections (and did yesterday, even).

Second, I did pay close attention to what the candidates were actually saying. See my comment below for an excerpt from Obama's formal 2008 platform on civil liberties, which he explained repeatedly throughout the campaign (and has now broken repeatedly).

My mistake was 1) trusting a politician 2) voting for a politician without a lengthy voting record. So there was no way to quantitatively verify many of his promises.