Sunday, February 27, 2011

Follow up: Shoeless Joe

Here's a further thought arising from my little video, "Shoes For Obama," seen in the post below.

Suppose a large number of people took up the suggestion to take off a shoe and hold it up high while Obama gave a speech. (Obviously, I'm talking about actual attendees; doing this while watching a televised speech would be silly.) The intention of the gesture would be to remind Obama of not just one broken campaign promise but of all the broken promises. But how would the Secret Service react? One hopes that everyone would understand the shoe thing as a protest maneuver, not as a threat.

Come to think of it, has Obama kept any major promises? Objectively speaking, what is the record? We need a non-snide, non-flippant answer.

7 comments:

Mr. Mike said...

Obama's tele ... er ... speeches were so vague how could you tell if he kept any promises he including the ones stolen from Hillary?

Joseph Cannon said...

Seriously -- and I was looking for serious, in this instance -- he made a number of specific statements. The "comfortable shoes" thing is just one example. You can go through the rest of that speech (it's online) and see lots of others.

johnsmart said...

Joseph - can you come on my blogtalk show monday night? easy...call an 877 number....want to talk about shoeless joe, wisconsin, and whatever else comes up.

john@johnwsmart.com

Anonymous said...

If interested, PolitiFact is keeping score.

The answer may surprise some, since he has kept more promises than he's broken.

XI

Zee said...

I know this is the opposite of what you asked for, but I wanted to note that one of the broken promises you never hear mentioned is minimum wage. Obama promised to raise the minimum wage to 9.50 by the end of his second year in office and has not. Even worse, a lot of people think he *did* raise the minimum wage because the third leg of the previous administration's gradual raise came while O's in office.

And don't trust those lists of promises kept. Follow up and verify. See the example I just gave for the type of thing that erroneously makes it on those lists.

Joseph Cannon said...

Zee, that is precisely what I asked for. A soberly made point.

Sextus Propertius said...

In May of 2007, Obama promised to give health insurance companies "a seat at the table" in the development of a health plan. He certainly kept that promise.