All The Promises We Made

National Journal is tracking how well President Obama does in keeping his campaign promises. In theory, I think this is a useful exercise. Politicians should have to prove their efficacy to stay in office, and they shouldn't get away with saying they'll do one thing and doing another.

In practice, it seems silly to expect that Obama will keep all of his promises. He'll break some for efficacy, some for politics. He'll break a lot of promises that are performance-based, just because governing is an unwieldy process. Sometimes, he'll do things that appear to break promises, only to fulfill them later.

That doesn't mean it's a bad idea to try to keep tabs on Obama. It just means it's a bad idea to pull the trigger on whether he's broken a promise too quickly. Of course, it's also a bad idea for Obama to make clear, easily defined promises and then immediately not keep them.