PRESIDENTIAL PROMISES….Here’s an interesting factoid from Knight Ridder:
President Bush will end his four-year term having fulfilled about 46 percent of the promises he made during the 2000 presidential campaign, according to an analysis by Knight Ridder.
…. A similar Knight Ridder analysis found that, during his first term, President Clinton had fulfilled about 66 percent of the 160 commitments that he made during his first presidential campaign.
I realize this number is a bit meaningless on its own, but even so it’s sort of remarkable that Bush has only managed to get to 46%. KR counts a broken promise as anything that fails to happen, regardless of reason, and in most cases the reason for failure was that a presidential proposal got blocked or stalled in Congress. But Bush has had a Republican House for his full term and a Republican Senate for all but 18 months, compared to Clinton, who faced a uniformly hostile Congress for two out of his first four years.
But at least Bush got his tax cuts. A Republican Congress is good for at least that much.
