Rating the State of the Union January 28, 2010
Posted by Matt in Barack Obama, politics.Tags: campaign promises, false, Obama, politifact, Sate of the Union, truth
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President Obama had a good bit to say last night, both in statements of past successes and promises for the future, but since this is politics, the question must be asked: how truthful was the president being?
The nonpartisan website politifact.com ran through some of the president’s statements, rating them as true, false, or somewhere in between. Below are a few of the site’s findings:
Some of his statements were found to be true or mostly true, including:
“We cut taxes for 95% of working families.”
“At the beginning of the last decade … America had a budget surplus of over $200B. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1T and projected deficits of $8T over the next decade.”
“For the first time in history, my administration posts our White House visitors online.”
Some of them were exaggerated:
“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – the spend without limit in our elections.”
“The pay-as-you-go law … was a big reason why we had record surpluses in the 1990′s.”
At least one was found to be false:
“We’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.”
And one showed a full flip-flop:
The idea of a government spending freeze which he opposed when it was brought up by John McCain in the election.
In all, it was probably on par with other SOTU speeches.
Also, if you are interested in knowing how Obama’s past promises are holding up, the site has rated 503 of them. So, far the scoring stands:
Promises kept: 91
Compromise: 33
Promises broken: 15
Stalled: 87
In the works: 275
Not yet rated: 2
Interesting. Thanks for the info
I stopped watching SOTU speeches years ago. They don’t provide information about the state of the union that is not already widely available in the information age. So their purpose seems to be little more than campaigning for either elections or programs. I have better things to do.
I agree with GRH to a certain extent about the SOTU address. With all of the information available to most of us via the internet, the SOTU does seem to be more for grandstanding than actual substance. However being that there are more households that are connected to the world via the ” TUBE ” rather than the internet, I feel that it is the right medium to get the message out to a broader audience. Even though at this point I feel as though that message was used as a form of damage control.
Don’t get me wrong. I still support this administration but I, just like many other Americans, am wondering when I am actually going to see the benefits of their actions. As some political analyst stated, using a football analogy, ” This is only the 1st quarter.” So while I, average ” Joe Citizen “, am sitting in the stands watching the governmental plays unfold before me, I can’t help but wonder if this strategy was the right way to start this game. I will remain diligent with watchful eyes as to what’s going to happen in the second quarter, but for some reason my gut is already asking the question, ” Is this strategy really going to win the game for us? ”
As a political outsider, and a severely under-informed individual that is just how I see things at this point. As a football fan I know that it only takes one miracle play to turn the momentum of a grim situation into a freight train of success. I just hope that it won’t come down to a Hail Mary moment at the end of the 4th quarter because the government has a long history of dropping the ball.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/02/09/martin.obama.republicans/index.html?hpt=T2
Thought you might enjoy this.
yeah, it’s time to go gangsta!