Barack Obama recently completed a full year as the president of the United States. He was elected as the 44th president with 52.9% of the popular vote (69,456,897 votes). It is a widely-accepted opinion that Obama inherited a troubled nation when he was inaugurated January 20, 2009. The American economy was in shambles and the general public had high hopes that Obama would have a quick fix. After just one year, the economy is, at best, stable. The varieties of numbers and percentages aren’t dwindling as quickly as they were the past two years, and the media is no longer fixated on exploiting fear. We probably have Tiger Woods to thank for that.
During his campaign to the presidency, Obama made a number of promises. According to St. Petersburg Times’ PolitiFact.com, he has made 522 promises so far, and placing complete trust in this random, Pulitzer Prize winning website, I think he could be judged fairly based on how many promises he has been able to keep and how many he has disregarded.
According to PolitiFact, President Obama has kept 91 promises to date.
• Established a credit card bill of rights
• Expanded loan programs for small businesses
• Sending additional troops to Afghanistan
• Subtracting the number of troops in Iraq
• Pushed for the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act
• Invested in different types of alternative energy
• Reversed restrictions on stem cell research
• Announced a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy
Those are just a few promises. The promises he has been able to fulfill are mostly geared towards equal rights issues, environmental issues, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has broken a total of 15 promises to date.
• Has not allowed five days of public comment before signing bills
• Has not made move for full equality for same-sex couples and their families
• Has not doubled funding for afterschool programs
• Has not televised health care reform negotiations
• Has not created a tax credit for companies that have added jobs
• Did not give a “State of the World” address during first year
These broken promises are mostly related to government spending and Obama’s expectation that he would be able to broadcast and share everything once he became president. Although he should be able to grant the LGBT community equal rights under the law, he can’t without some kind of support. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have it. And unfortunately, a legitimate reason has still not been found for that blatant legal bigotry.
In the crosshairs are 33 compromised promises, 86 stalled promises, and 276 promises that are in the works. Now, this of course is not a signifier or a litmus test that ends all debate, but it is at least an aggregate of facts that reveals what Obama has accomplished and what he plans to accomplished. It certainly counts for something when grading his first full year as the president of the “free” world.
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