Reading a quite a few of the diaries here and the commentary in the media, one could get the impression that the Obama administration has either failed, is failing or on the verge of failure. What I found lacking was any "measurement" criteria for making these broad declarations. So how to "measure" the success or failure of the Obama administration?
Personally, I like the idea of measuring our President against what he told us he would do during the campaign. After all, isn't that why we voted for him...to get certain things done? Rather than simply using opinions about whether the Obama administration is effective, I'm proposing a new metric, the Promise/Delivery or P/D ratio. Investors use the Price/Earnings (P/E ratio) as one measure of the effectiveness of their investment. Why shouldn't we have a measure that tells us whether our vote was a good investment.
An excellent tool to monitor and measure the Obama administration, Obameter is available from PolitiFact at the St. Petersburg Times. They've documented 513 Promises that President Obama made during the campaign and are scoring those as kept, compromise, broken, stalled or no action. So how is President Obama doing as of today? He's kept, compromised or got in the works 74 of the 513 promises or 14.4%.
Kept 20 3.9%
Compromise 6 1.2%
Broken 3 0.6%
Stalled 3 0.6%
In the Works 48 9.4%
No Action 433 84.4%
Total 513
But one must take into consideration the time that President Obama has had to execute on those promises. Consider the fact that President Obama has been in office for 68 days or 4.66% of a four year term. One would expect that he would have kept, compromised, or have in the works 24 of those promises. I would conclude that at this point in his term, President Obama has been extremely effective since he is over-performing by 308%, action taken on 74 versus 24 of the promises he made to voters. That is a fact. As the late Senator Moynihan once said: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Here are the promises kept:
No. 15: Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners
No. 36: Expand loan programs for small businesses
No. 40: Extend and index the 2007 Alternative Minimum Tax patch
No. 58: Expand eligibility for State Children's Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)
No. 125: Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq
No. 134: Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan
No. 239: Release presidential records
No. 241: Require new hires to sign a form affirming their hiring was not due to political affiliation or contributions.
No. 278: Remove more brush, small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires
No. 307: Create a White House Office on Urban Policy
No. 327: Support increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts
No. 411: Work to overturn Ledbetter vs. Goodyear
No. 427: Ban lobbyist gifts to executive employees
No. 452: Weatherize 1 million homes per year
No. 458: Invest in all types of alternative energy
No. 459: Enact tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars
No. 480: Support high-speed rail
No. 503: Appoint at least one Republican to the cabinet
No. 507: Extend unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspend taxes on these benefits
No. 513: Reverse restrictions on stem cell research