President Obama's Key Promises, One Year Later
A look at where things stand on the pledges Obama made a year ago.
Jan. 19, 2010— -- Nearly a year since President Obama took office, his plate is stacked high with a variety of domestic and international issues -- the economy, health care, two wars and national security, to name just a few.
The president recognized these challenges when he took office last January, but he also quickly pushed many agenda items in what some at the time called too hurried a move.
Obama swiftly pushed Congress to pass a $787 billion stimulus program to boost employment. He began removing combat troops from Iraq while upping the number of forces in Afghanistan. He made health care a key priority.
When asked about his job performance, Obama said in an interview with People Magazine last week that he is "pretty good" at his job. In an interview with Oprah last month, the president gave himself a "good, solid B-plus" for his performance.
But a year into his term, Americans' confidence in Obama is shrinking and more feel negatively about the country's direction, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. Fifty-three percent of those polled approved of the job Obama is doing, considerably lower than the 68 percent job approval rating he enjoyed right after taking office. Sixty-two percent of Americans now say the country's on the wrong track, the most in 11 months.
Obama acknowledged those concerns, telling People, "They have every right to feel deflated because the economy was far worse than any of us expected."
The president also admitted that he has not been able to bring people together as he had promised in the 2008 presidential campaign. The president vowed to promote bipartisanship, but Republican support has been missing on nearly every major issue he has pushed, including stimulus, climate change and health care.
"What I haven't been able to do in the midst of this crisis is bring the country together in a way that we had done in the Inauguration. That's what's been lost this year... that whole sense of changing how Washington works," Obama said.
Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site from the St. Petersburg Times, conducted a tally of all the promises Obama made a year ago and in his campaign. Of 502 specific campaign promises they gathered, Obama has fulfilled 91, can claim partial success on 33, has broken 14 and is stalled on 87. About 275 of his promises are still in the works.
Unlike some of his predecessors, Obama had been very specific on his promises, even setting a timeline for some.
Here is a look at some of the key promises he made and where things stand on those:
As a candidate, Obama was open about his desire to close the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay, saying it served as a "recruiting tool" for U.S. enemies. Just weeks after moving into the White House, Obama signed an executive order to shut down the detainee center and ordered it closed within a year. All the detainees under his transfer would either be transferred to U.S. prisons or overseas.
"It will ultimately make us safer," Obama said in an interview with NBC last February. "You've already seen, in the reaction around the world, a different sense of America by us taking this action."
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