The Obameter: Final Score

Politifact, a website run by the Tampa Bay Times, started a fact-checking subsite called the Obameter when the current President took office in 2009, designed to track the fulfillment, or not, of Obama's 533 campaign promises.   The final tally is shown below, with a score of 48.4% for Promises Kept:

No doubt that score would have been higher if Republicans in Congress had not stonewalled the President at every single turn, to the point of actually shutting down the government.

At the Obameter site you can browse through all 533 promises to see what has been done or left undone with each one over the last eight years.

Politifact also tracks the statements and promises of other politicians, including Obama's successor, with its Truth-O-Meter.  Whether fact-checking and truth-telling will remain legal under the next administration, however, is anyone's guess.

The Obameter

Well we woke up to a cold, gray, gloomy day here in Texas, with freezing rain expected tonight and icy stuff continuing through Wednesday. The kind of weather that makes you want to say Oh shit and just roll back under the covers and stay put. Till April.

All last week it was crisp and sunny, but not now; guess you could take it as a metaphor for the everyday drudgery returning after a wonderful party. Oh well, that's life. The sun can't shine every day, and Monday morning always comes around again.

So from excitement and high hopes we turn to slogging away at what needs to be done, shoulder to the wheel once more. No doubt even the President is settling in for a long, hard pull this week. And he knows - if his predecessor didn't - that he's accountable for what he does or doesn't do. That's what makes this a democracy, and a great one.

So I think it's great that the St. Pete Times has come up with the very cool Obameter, which tracks the President's progress on about 500 campaign promises he made last year. He's already made good on five of them.

You can sort through them all by subject; gay rights are numbers 290-294. So far, no progress on any of those, but hey, I know he's got a lot of important stuff on his plate right now - like rescuing the economy from collapsing into a black hole, and other very scary things.

So I think we can afford to be patient while he sorts out his priorities. But a day is coming, not too far off, when we must hold him to account on behalf of the gay community.

I think he will do us proud in the long run. But since the dawn of history, it's always been the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, you know?

(Honk to Citizen Crain)