Should a President That Has Failed to Keep His Promises be Re-Elected?

Would it not seem reasonable to examine how well an elected official has fulfilled his or her promises and pledges to the electorate before determining whether that person is worthy of re-election?  If that is the case, then one must question how a vote to re-elect President Obama can be justified.

The president:

- Pledged that he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison within one year of taking office. It remains open almost four years later;

- Pledged that if his $787 billion stimulus program was approved, the unemployment rate would remain below 8%. The stimulus was passed, but the rate of unemployment crashed through 8% on the way up to 10%, having now receded to a still-historically high 7.9%, greater than it was when President Obama took office;

- Pledged to cut the deficit in half. He has in fact continued the ruinous fiscal path begun by fake conservative Republican George W. Bush, the Obama annual budget deficits exceeding $1 trillion as the nation borrows about forty cents of every dollar it spends;

- Said on Feb. 2, 2009 regarding his plan to endf the financial crisis, "If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition."  By any standard, and by the president's own admission, the financial crisis has not ended. Far too many are unemployed, underemployed, or have become so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work. The rate of employment despair is particularly high among minorities and youths. Now the president tells us that it will not be "a one-term proposition," rather that he needs four more years to do what he was unable or unwilling to do in the first four.

- Said on Jan. 15, 2009 regarding the explosive cost of entitlement programs, "What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further. We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s."  No hard decisions were made within the president's first term and government spending remains out of control. President Obama essentially threw in the trash the recommendations of his own Simpson-Bowles National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which provided sound methods of cost reduction and revenue enhancement to reduce future projected deficits. Neither fiscal responsibility nor reform have occurred on President Obama's watch.

If one is judged by the promises they make, Barack Obama will not be re-elected.  How foolish it is of the public to believe what any candidate for office says in order to curry favor and secure votes. We should assume that once the individual is firmly ensconced in office, the individual will claim, "I did not know things were so bad. I cannot keep my promises."