Happy birthday, Mr. President!

Every day is a special day.
Also today.
More so because it is the anniversary of Barack Obama.
Happy birthday, Mr. President.

A good opportunity to check the Obameter.
An initiative of the newspaper The St. Petersburg Times.
They have compiled more than 500 promises Barack Obama made during the election campaign.
Now they are tracking their progress.
And for good reason.
Because Barack Obama himself has said during the election campaign:

“I want you to hold our government accountable.
I want you to hold me accountable”.

OK, Mr. President, we will do that.

So, where are we after 196 days of Obama being in office?

Of the 515 promises Obama made, 34 were kept.
On 11 he made a compromise.
7 promises were broken.
12 are stalled.
77 are in the works.
And on 374 promises no action has been taken.

To put it differently:

• 6.6 % promises were kept.
• 1.3 % promises were broken.
• 72.6 % promises are waiting in the drawers.

A US President has 4 years to govern his country.
That is 1.460 days.
The time to make good on what he promised the electorate.
If in 196 days 6.6 % of the promises were kept, mathematics and logic will predict us that at the end of his turn less than 50 % of the 515 promises will have been fulfilled.

Will the electorate in 3.5 years time accept this?
See that as a good record and achievement?
Creating enough confidence to allow Obama a second term of 4 years?

This partly depends of who is going to be the presidential candidate of the Republicans.
If it is to be Sarah Palin, the question will be how convincing she will be with her promises.

That is all in the future.
Right now we better focus on the Obama promises that are being kept.
And what they imply for the US citizens.

The most recent promise kept was the signing of the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities on July 31.
This UN convention asserts the rights to education, health, work, adequate living conditions, freedom of movement, freedom from exploitation and equal recognition before the law for persons with disabilities.
By signing, and then ratifying the treaty, the United States commit themselves to enact laws and other measures to improve disability rights, as well as abolish discriminatory legislation, customs and practices.

A good thing, as long as the United States really live up to this treaty.

And what about the promises that are broken?
Two examples:

Obama promised that senior citizens making less than $ 50,000 per year would not have to pay income tax anymore.
Forget it.
They will have to continue to pay an average of $ 1,400 annually in income tax.

Obama promised he was going to recognize the genocide of thousands of Armenians in 1915 by the Turks.
But also for Barack Obama once in power, the relationship with Turkey was more important than telling the truth.

More than all his promises though, probably the major test for Obama will be his efforts to turn around the health care system in the USA.
A struggle that is going on right now and that is in fact a situation where capitalism opposes any form of socialism.
The defending of the right to make money no matter how even if it makes part of the own population suffer and even die.
It is a battle of principle.
And it looks Obama can’t win this one.
The power of the insurance companies and their Republican representatives is just too big with their 250 billion Dollars profit annually.

The best Obama can get out of this is probably an ugly compromise.
And that will shine on him much more than all the election campaign promises fulfilled.

Failing on health care reform will look very bleak compared to all the hoopla during his election campaign.
“Yes, we can”.
Can what?

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For more on the Obameter, click on:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/


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