I don't know that I would say meaningless...It's definitely not useful as a comparison tool, but I think it's a good information source. There are definitely people out there who want to say that the president hasn't kept any of his promises, and there are people who want to say he's kept all of them. A scorecard like this could come in handy, just not in a debate over who's kept the most promises.
It's useful in isolation because all presidents have the same theoretical goal: 100% honesty. It would be more useful if it could be compared to other presidents' records and the realistic expectations they've established, but it's OK on it's own.
Also, Obama established a sense of hope and “this time we mean it” that, say, Kerry never came close to. Obama breaking a campaign promise carries more weight than J. Random Politician, because most of us never believed the other guy in the first place.
PS: The Republican Party has a fantastic bipartisan icon in Eisenhower, but the Right of today is so unlike the Republicans of 50 years ago that they almost never mention him. I've heard them praise Nixon more than Eisenhower lately, and Nixon was a disaster. But he was the first of the modern Republicans, while Eisenhower was not.
Nixon came into power along with the Religious Right and our modern ideas of Red States and a Republican Party based below the Mason-Dixon line, while in Eisenhower's era, Republicans were still “the Party of Lincoln”. There are counties in the south that vote solidly Democrat to this day, not because they're remotely liberal, but because they're so reactionary they still haven't forgiven the Civil War… excuse me, the War of Northern Aggression.
I dunno...I still think that without context it's really not helpful information. For example, suppose you took a test and you only scored 60/200 points. You would probably feel pretty crummy about that score, and you'd probably want to know how other people scored as well as a basis of comparison. Because if everyone else only scored 30/200 then it means your score was actually quite good; you scored DOUBLE what everyone else did. See what I mean? Sure it's good for "keeping track", but without some basis of comparison the numbers are nothing more than numbers, and numbers need context in order to have meaning. It's my biggest issue with statistics as a whole, because numbers can be spun to present in a particular light, depending on the message trying to be delivered. Without knowing how many promises OTHER presidents have kept/broken, and what the average ratio of kept to broken promises normally is, there's no real way of knowing if keeping 40 or 50 promises in his first term is good or bad. It also doesn't address how good or bad that is considering it's his first term. They're just numbers.
Don't get me wrong here!! I'm not 100% thrilled with everything Obama has done, and I think he's dropped the ball on MORE than one occasion... It's just that numbers without context are relatively meaningless and it irritates me that things like this exist because it DOESN'T really give you that great of an idea on how he's actually doing.
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Date: 2009-09-13 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 02:36 pm (UTC)Also, Obama established a sense of hope and “this time we mean it” that, say, Kerry never came close to. Obama breaking a campaign promise carries more weight than J. Random Politician, because most of us never believed the other guy in the first place.
PS: The Republican Party has a fantastic bipartisan icon in Eisenhower, but the Right of today is so unlike the Republicans of 50 years ago that they almost never mention him. I've heard them praise Nixon more than Eisenhower lately, and Nixon was a disaster. But he was the first of the modern Republicans, while Eisenhower was not.
Nixon came into power along with the Religious Right and our modern ideas of Red States and a Republican Party based below the Mason-Dixon line, while in Eisenhower's era, Republicans were still “the Party of Lincoln”. There are counties in the south that vote solidly Democrat to this day, not because they're remotely liberal, but because they're so reactionary they still haven't forgiven the Civil War… excuse me, the War of Northern Aggression.
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Date: 2009-09-14 04:17 pm (UTC)Sure it's good for "keeping track", but without some basis of comparison the numbers are nothing more than numbers, and numbers need context in order to have meaning. It's my biggest issue with statistics as a whole, because numbers can be spun to present in a particular light, depending on the message trying to be delivered. Without knowing how many promises OTHER presidents have kept/broken, and what the average ratio of kept to broken promises normally is, there's no real way of knowing if keeping 40 or 50 promises in his first term is good or bad. It also doesn't address how good or bad that is considering it's his first term. They're just numbers.
Don't get me wrong here!! I'm not 100% thrilled with everything Obama has done, and I think he's dropped the ball on MORE than one occasion... It's just that numbers without context are relatively meaningless and it irritates me that things like this exist because it DOESN'T really give you that great of an idea on how he's actually doing.