Obama's 2008 campaign promise scorecard

[shesulsa]

I gave up wading through the drive-by threads in the political forums here trying to find Bob's old link and found this.

[h=1]The Obameter: Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises[/h]

PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.

We rate their status as Not Yet Rated, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

I haven't taken the time to investigate if PolitiFact is partisan or not ... I'm sure the Lord Gawd Emperor will kick in if there's a better source.

Enjoy!

 

[shesulsa]

Oh! And I'd also like to link to a thread with some educational reading resources to the U.S. Government so those who wish to be truly educated voters can peruse writings on our style of government, lessons on the Constitution, etcetera. Grab that java!

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES (assembled by Bob Hubbard)

 

[seasoned]

I need all the help I can get trying to wade through the media hype.

 

[crushing]

Thanks! Sometimes it isn't until you read the actual quotes of the promises that you realize that they give themselves a lot of wiggle room. For example, "On my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war". Sure enough, the President had a meeting with the military leadership, his cabinet, and the ambassador to Iraq with this directive and then they proceeded to stick with the previous administrations negotiated SOFA with Iraq.

Obama did make this promise before the SOFA was finalized, and the "new mission" of ending the war in Iraq was in already in process before he became president, so it certainly shouldn't be considered a broken promise. PolitiFact is missing some very basic information regarding how this promise was kept, almost as if President Obama snapped his fingers and it happened magically overnight in a vacuum and it didn't take months of negotiations by another administration.

What I found kind of funny at the time of the time of the withdrawal from Iraq was Republicans disparaging "Obama's Iraq withdrawal" and trying to use the withdrawal to paint Obama as weak on foreign policy. Was it just part of the political game, or did they really not know that the end of the war in Iraq was actually done under the Bush administration's terms?

 

[WC_lun]

Well Crushing, given some of the dumb *** things some of these politicians have said in media interviews, I'd say some of them know the truth and some of them are just clueless. It annoys me because it is thier job to know this stuff. That is part of being a congressman, I would think.

 

[arnisador]

PolitiFact is pretty good.

 

[rainesr]

Some of the compromises and stalled should be promise broken in my opinion, overall it seems better than the slants you get with fox news and cnn.

~Rob

 

[Bill Mattocks]

You don't understand. If the promise is rated as being kept, then it's all credit to Obama. If it is rated as stalled or broken, it's the fault of those obstructionist Republicans.

And by the way, this would also be true if the shoe was on the other foot. If it were Bush, we'd hear the same thing. Anything good, he did. Anything bad, it's someone else's fault.

Nobody is responsible for failing to keep a campaign promise, ever. Always someone else's fault.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Presidents keep their campaign promises - The Washington Post

Michael Krukones published “Promises and Performance: Presidential Campaigns as Policy Predictors,” and found that “about 75 percent of the promises made by presidents from Woodrow Wilson through Jimmy Carter were kept

Jeff Fishel published “Presidents and Promises: From Campaign Pledge to Presidential Performance,” which argued “that presidents invariably attempt to carry out their promises; the main reason some pledges are not redeemed is congressional opposition, not presidential flip-flopping.”

More recent evidence supports this view, too. Politifact.com has tracked more than 500 promises Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign. It found he has kept 161, passed a compromised version of another 50, and has either been rebuffed by Congress or is making progress toward another 239. In only 56 cases — about 10 percent — has Obama actually broken a promise, and in the biggest of those cases — ending the Bush tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 — there’s a good chance the promise will be kept when the tax cuts expire at the end of this year.