I’ve started a couple of times to put together a spreadsheet to keep track of what Obama has been doing, or not doing. Turns out it’s a big job — just to keep track, much less do them all! (Of course I have only me, and Obama has a cast of thousands, but still what he is trying to do is enormous.) After a little searching I found a pretty good Obamameter being kept by Politifact.com from The St. Petersburg Times.

[Update: But see the NPR Obama Tracker -- upper right corner of the blog. Very nice!]

This isn’t quite what I had envisioned but it’s so well done, and in such depth, it’s worth everyone’s knowing about. In the first place PoltiFacts says it is just tracking campaign promises — kept, broken, compromised, stalled, and in the works. This is great but of course a lot more is going on than simply keeping campaign promises. Neither do I have an independent means of counting up the campaign promises to agree or disagree with their total of 511. Of course, counting this way misses out on the good, bad or mixed things done which were not promised, were not even anticipated. I don’t find, for example, note of the budget-bump for the VA and the emergency meeting on veterans health issues being counted. I find nothing about the DOJ’s mixed record on rolling back Bush’s legacy of frightening expansion of Executive powers. In my proposed tally these would certainly appear. Finally, when the promise was of a posture, or an intention from which may flow many acts, it is entirely possible that some actions would hew to the promise and others split from it. These may not be counted by Polifact, unless put into the compromise column once there is deviation.

Nevertheless, the numbers as of today are pretty impressive:

Kept: 16
Compromise: 7
Broken: 2
Stalled: 2
In the works: 31
No Action: 453

This changes daily. Go take a look and make the link part of your favorites. We’ll certainly check it from time to time. I wonder if they did, or if there exists, a similar score card for Bush? (And of course, many of his promises-made would not be considered by many of us, to be good things!)

The other significant difference is that their measure is “promise kept or broken.” While there may be room for disagreement with the editors about their call — you may not agree that what they deem broken, is in fact broken — on the whole the judgment is mostly factual. My score card would be more subjective: is this act good for many or bad for many? Thus, raising the budget for the VA would get a thumbs up; continuing the Bush argument for keeping expansive state’s secrets would get a thumbs down.

If anyone has an interest in working with me on the more complete score card I had in mind, let me know. Look at this first to see what a lot of work would be involved to do one so well. There are others floating around both pro and (stupidly) con which aren’t half as well done.