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Obama’s Accomplishments

In response to Chris Matthew’s idiotic “gotcha” interview with one of Obama’s supporters, a guest-blogger at Andrew Sullivan’s site has posted a great rundown of the Senator’s legislative accomplishments to-date:

Last night, Texas State Senator Kirk Watson, an Obama supporter, was embarrassed on national TV when he couldn’t name any of Obama’s legislative achievements….As it happens, Obama does have substantive legislative achievements. I have written more about them here. A few highlights, all of which became law:

* Ethics Reform…

* The Lugar-Obama initiative to strengthen the Nunn-Luger framework for securing loose nukes…

* Various bills concerning the response to Hurricane Katrina…

There are also a lot of good bills he worked on that did not make it, including the compromise immigration bill and a proposal to create an independent Congressional Ethics Enforcement Commission, and some that are on the Senate calendar now, like a bill to criminalize various deceptive election tactics, like deceptive robocalls, providing misleading information about where to vote or what conditions you have to meet to be eligible to vote, etc.

There’s a lot more. Honestly, there is. I wrote a summary here (and an earlier one here), and provided lists (1, 2, 3) of all the bills and amendments sponsored or co-sponsored by Clinton and Obama in the 109th and 110th Congresses, just so it would be as easy as possible for people to see for themselves.

The post goes on to point out that the real empty shirt here isn’t Obama, it’s Matthews himself:

But I’m just an amateur. I have a full-time job doing something else. Chris Matthews, by contrast, is paid large sums of money to provide political commentary and insight. I assume he has research assistants at his disposal. He could have done this work a lot more easily than I did. But he didn’t. He was more interested in gotcha moments than in actually enlightening the American people.

So here’s a challenge for Chris Matthews, or anyone else in the media who wants to take it up. Go over Clinton and Obama’s actual legislative records. Find the genuine legislative accomplishments that each has to his or her name. Report to the American people on what you find. Until you do, don’t accept statements from either side about who has substance and who does not, or who traffics in “speeches” and who offers “solutions”. That’s lazy, unprofessional, and a disservice to your audience.

Do your jobs. Don’t leave it to bloggers like me to do it for you.

Damn straight.

~ Matt