Screw the Campaign Promises

No one believed that Barack Obama was going to be able to tackle his campaign promises immediately, not with the looming recession. But the list of promises being delayed, recounted in this morning’s Times, is quite stout: “renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, overhauling immigration laws, restricting carbon emissions, raising taxes on the wealthy, and allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military.” In an interview airing today on This Week, Obama says, “Not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped.” Most of the interest-group types who talked to the paper are patient, though they’re not willing to wait forever. “I am suggesting this is very doable in 2009,” says the head of a group that represents gay soldiers who were forced out of the military.