All politicians make a plethora of promises during their election campaigns, Presidential candidates especially. George W. Bush made 177 promises in 2000 and Bill Clinton made 204 in 1992, as reported by the newspaper company McClatchy. Astoundingly, Barack Obama made 510 promises during his campaign. Looks like somebody backed up into the promise machine and knocked the lever into overdrive. Not only are the expectations on Obama to be a miracle worker irrationally high, but he has further raised the bar himself by heaping on the promises. Yes, not only do you get hot fudge on your sundae, but you get not one, but 510 maraschino cherries on top!
Is Barack Obama a people-pleaser who will promise the moon, but only give you a piece of moldy cheese? The next four years will bear this out; but how to keep track of whether or not President Barack Obama is actually fulfilling his campaign promises? Check out PolitiFact.com and its "Obameter", which enumerates and tracks all of Obama's 510 promises. The "Obameter" assigns one of six labels to each promise: Promise Kept, Compromise, Promise Broken, Stalled, In the Works, and No Action.
Now, any rational person will realize that no politician can ever realistically keep every promise they make, and often times they will only be able to fulfill a mere fraction of what they wanted to do in light of Senate and Congressional support/approval and domestic and foreign realities. Did he promise too much? Yes. Did these desperate times demand a healthy heaping of promises? Maybe---but promises are only good if you can keep them. Unfulfilled promises can breed resentment and disillusionment in a time when Americans have become largely suspicious and resentful of politicians. Anyone remember "Read my lips: NO NEW TAXES!"?
In any case, this is definitely a time of crisis for our nation that requires us to all band together as Americans with the common purpose of pulling our nation out of the quagmire it's been mired in for the last eight years. That requires giving this new President a chance, and for both Republicans, Democrats and Independents to actually work together, for a change. Then after everything begins to improve, we can all go back to being at each others' throats again---YAY!
I have created an excel file of 895 Obama Promises called the Barack Obama Promise Tracker. This is available on my website www.ideapalooza.com . Check it out, see the comments, google the name! I did hours of research to create this file. No one has more promises on the web. xxoo
Posted by: Todd Smith | February 05, 2009 at 09:36 PM