The recent proposed legislation on net neutrality brought with it the fact that, candidate Barack Obama promised to provide a neutral internet while in office. Campaign promises are a tricky matter because, some see them as gospel, while pragmatic folk see them as a necessary evil to get elected. Commitments should be kept, but the reality of office, and the world’s most hectic job, shows just how difficult it is to follow through on promises.
Obama’s rise to the presidency, with soaring rhetoric and a mandate to change the way government operated, had a tremendous message and was a precision machine that fired on all cylinders. Once the operation moved to the capital, rust, gunk buildup, and other agents of sluggery slowed the machine to a snail’s pace. This fact makes President Obama the perfect example of ambition versus realism in American politics. Yet, when looking at the President’s accomplishments, a different story starts to emerge. Using Politifact’s database of campaign promises and whether or not they were kept, Obama has fulfilled more than two times the amount of promises broken.
Broken Promises Vs. Promises Kept:
President Obama has kept 240 promises but who focuses on such successful measures?
The amount of promises broken become scrutinized, no matter their number. President Obama has only broken 115 promises, with net neutrality potentially being number 116, and broken promises are always more glaring and easy to pick apart. This also shows how strong the media focus is on negativity in politics.
No wonder the American people despise the system constructed to represent them, if they are only getting the bad half of the story. The American people may like the occasional mudslinging, but the tiresome antics on the political stage have made a population wary. This should be eye opening for politicians who want to win elections which would, in turn, result in a “Run on what you’ve accomplished and not what your opponent hasn’t” mentality, but that has yet to be seen.
The purpose here is not to exonerate the President’s mistakes, but to highlight how we perceive politicians and their promises. Obama did not follow through on closing the abhorrent prisons at Guantanamo Bay, close tax loopholes used by Big Oil, increase the national minimum wage, or have increased transparency in government. The practical among us in 2008 would have said such actions were unlikely to happen from the start, not because of the politician but because of politics. This sentiment is going to make Barack Obama the perfect martyr for future change.
Signposts for Bad Government:
The President won in 2008 because of an unprecedented level of youth support. These young people, the minds behind Lazy Activism among them, believed that the system of entrenched interests was about to get a thwacking that would lead to a more productive government for the rest of our young lives. Yet, the opposite happened, and it must be noted how many positive things the Obama administration has accomplished, since this point is more in regards to the inactivity of the Congress.
Perhaps, because of the president’s race, or assumed political beliefs, government almost stopped functioning completely on several occasions. This process has shown the young people who were so invested seven years ago, that government does not work.
This is dangerously untrue. Government does work when the people who are apart of it want to work. The system is rigged and broken, the processes slow and antiquated. There is plenty of disillusionment to go around, but the majority has been placed on the President’s shoulders, which is unfair.
Obama was an idealist in a world of hardened realists. The real disappointment should lie in the monetarily based, sludge-caked system that is the American government. Obama is the best representation to show the youth of this country just how convoluted and idiotic the current system is. And this does not only apply to leftist youths, but to all young people who will inherit the future and its ways of governance.
It should be a wake up call for young people to challenge established ways of government and business, by changing it from the inside. Government is a problem right now, but it doesn’t have to be the problem of the future.
All those youths who voted for Obama have decades left to vote and decades left to progress. Hopefully they are paying attention to what is happening around them now, and learn from those mistakes so they can take that doe eyed optimism and turn it into a steely resolve to fix the future.
Lazy Activism 