In the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign, I was talking with my friend Bill Adair, editor of PolitiFact.com (a project of Poynter's
St. Petersburg Times), about what might be next for the Web site that created the Truth-o-Meter. The site investigated candidate ads and claims during the campaign.
I had just written a piece that looked at what Obama said would be his priorities upon taking office. I was struck by how many "priorities" he said he had. I suggested, and Bill said others did too, that they turn PolitiFact's attention toward tracking the promises Obama made during the campaign. The site has done just that.
Take a look. You can see specific promises and progress made on each and every one.I asked Adair some questions about the project.
Al Tompkins: How did you find these 510 Obama promises?Bill Adair: We did a lot of digging. Our writers Angie Holan and Rob Farley spent six weeks going through virtually every word the Obama campaign produced on position papers, the campaign Web site, speeches, transcripts and videos.
They found the campaign was surprisingly specific about the promises, often giving deadlines. That will make it easier for us to track them -- except for a few that have deadlines way in the future.
What promises surprised you most?Adair: The real narrow ones that were clearly targeted to very small constituencies -- such as parents of children with autism or hunters or people who cared about Western wildfires.
The one we laugh about the most is one that says he will "fund proposals to help fish and game survive climate change." We wonder if that means he's going to buy air conditioners for bears.
What is the Obameter?Adair: It uses our distinctive PolitiFact approach -- a meter -- to rate both the progress and fulfillment of his promises. It's a little more complicated than our Truth-O-Meter, which simply shows the relative truth of a statement, but the Obameter had to be because it measures the two concepts.
Our artists did a wonderful job designing something cool-looking but simple that I think quickly conveys the status of the promise.
I think there's a bright future in meters for PolitiFact. They are ideal for Web journalism because they take a complicated subject and convey a conclusion very simply. But they still have substance behind them, and our stories do.
Why track promises like this? Doesn't every politician make promises they can't keep when faced with the challenges of the times, politics, or changing world realities?Adair: That's what one professor told us. He was clearly a big Obama supporter and pooh-poohed the whole concept.
And yes, politicians make lots of promises and often can't keep them. But they should still be held accountable for what they say. If they're not, it breeds cynicism. We in the media shouldn't feed that cynicism; we should do our job (finally!) of holding politicians accountable. That's what PolitiFact is all about -- not just with the Obameter, but with our Truth-O-Meter too.
And yes, things will change. And some promises will fail because they are no longer a high priority. So the fact that a promise is ultimately broken doesn't mean Obama necessarily failed. He may have abandoned it because of other priorities. But it's still valuable for us to check each one as a way of keeping tabs on him and telling our readers what he's doing.
What are you counting as a "promise?" In other words, does he have to say "I promise" for you to count ir or can he say something like "I want to" or "I will propose"? After all, the president does not make law, Congress does.We defined a promise as "not a position statement. It is a prospective statement of an action or outcome that is verifiable."
That's key. If he simply says he supports abortion rights, that's not a promise. But when he says "I will continue to defend this right by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president," that's a promise. We can verify whether he does it.
