Lick And A Promise Meaning

(idiomatic) The hasty or incomplete performance of a task.

Example: 1955, Max Shulman, ‎Robert Paul Smith, The Tender Trap: A Comedy, page 14:
  Now this is not the way to get a house in order. What this place needs is a real thorough old-fashioned cleaning. A lick and a promise won't do, no, sir!
2000, Mary Higgins Clark, While My Pretty One Sleeps:
  The snowplows had made what Myles would call a lick-and-a-promise attempt to partially clear the accumulated snow from West End Avenue.
2014 May 22, “EDITORIAL: India's Modi wins voter mandate for economic growth”, Washington Times:
  Rising out of poverty will require not a lick and a promise but deep reform.