Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings has an interesting 3 part series on the legislative records of McCain vs. Obama.
He gives us some very eye opening facts. Strictly the facts.
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/...
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/...
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/...
When people say Obama is an empty suit I want to scream. I knew Obama has done alot of real work in the time he's been in the senate but, when compared to McCain, it's really eye opening. Especially when you consider that McCain is a senior senator who has the status of one who's been there for quite some time. And his party has been in the majority at least half the time McCain has been there.
Obama has been there for 4 years and only 2 of them have the demcrats been in the majority. Barely.
I compare the legislation each person has sponsored (later I'll do co-sponsored legislation) that actually became law. For one thing, this gives some idea of how effective they are at working with Congress, and for another, it's easy to write a bill that promises the moon so long as you don't think there's the least possibility that it will ever become law;
Hilzoy also avoids things like ceremonial naming of things like statues and post offices:
The interesting part, for me, is seeing how the comparisons come out. I never really know in advance; one reason I do this is as a check on my own objectivity. In this case, I assumed that McCain would absolutely dominate during the 109th Congress, both because his party was in power and because of his seniority. (These affect not just how likely his bills are to pass, but how likely they are to be listed as his bills: there's a reason that the bill Dick Lugar and Barack Obama wrote on nonproliferation was introduced as Lugar-Obama.) I wasn't sure about the 110th: Obama's party was in control, but McCain still had seniority; probably more importantly, both candidates were off campaigning.
Hilzoy also looks at the co-sponsoring of bills. Not the ones that senators sign on to at the last minute because it will look good. He did some real investigation and only looked at the ones where they signed on at the earliest possible moment:
I have counted only bills that McCain and Obama signed onto at the earliest possible moment, and in the case of amendments, I went to the Congressional Record to see whether they were listed as co-sponsors when the amendment was introduced. This rules out bills and amendments that they clearly signed onto after the fact. On the other hand, it undoubtedly includes legislation that they did not actually help draft. I've listed the number of original co-sponsors for each bill/amendment: a bill with two original co-sponsors is more likely to reflect those co-sponsors' work than one with fifty. Nonetheless, this list undoubtedly includes too much; I don't know how to rectify that.
It is amazing that so many assume that length is equal to output or ability. This is fostered by the media that is too lazy to look into things like this to inform the voters of the reality of things.
Someone can be in the senate for 20 years and have nothing or very little to show for it.
But, when someone goes to the trouble of this kind of indepth work to see what the reality is, we need to make sure it gets out to as many people as possible to see what the real story is.
Please look at the records and pass it on to others and maybe even email this to news outlets as we need to knock out the myths and assumptions and bring to light the true facts.