President Obama: Promises Kept?

Amanda Walters
amanda.n.walters@gmail.com
While Mitt Romney and President Obama are fighting to get votes for this year’s election, it is good to think back on the reasons President Obama was able to win in the first place. The president won the election by selling people on the idea of “hope and change”. But did that change really happen? Did all of our hoping really work? The best way is to look at the promises the then senator made. The question becomes then, did President Obama keep all of the promises he made when he was on the campaign trail?

This article from CBSnews.com did just that. It looked at just the truth – just what we already know. And after having to see the rhetoric over and over on TV, it’s a breath of fresh air. Similar to websites like Politico and PolitiFact, CBS took at a look at the facts behind the rhetoric. But unlike both these sites it didn’t use cues like “mostly” or “partially” true, promises were either kept or they were broken. By not leaving any wiggle room, it kept things simple and honest. A promise cannot be “mostly” kept, and this is not a talking point that a politician can talk their way around.

Being not only a journalist, but also someone who will be voting in this election, that is really all I care about – the facts. Many times over the past week and months we’ve heard stories about politicians who blatantly lie. They have the facts wrong – and more than that - they try to play around with words until before you know it they are proving just how right they are. While that seems to work sometimes in politics, when faced with a decision as important as whom to vote for to lead our country, facts mean everything. Only when we know the facts can we really chose who we should choose to lead us into the future.