At the end of Barack Obama's first year in office, there is controversy over the nature and extent of his accomplishments, and even some allies and supporters appear to have forgotten the atmosphere of multidirectional crisis in which Obama took office. What's more, the steady decline in Obama's approval ratings appears to follow very closely a shift in media reporting away from reporting facts and back to the hyper-commentary style of the run-up to the Iraq war, an atmosphere in which conservative political propaganda fares better than the facts of deliberative action.

Pres. Obama was accused early-on of making an unprecedented list of promises, and even by the time of his inauguration, there was speculation about a gap in election-year perceptions and aspirations and the realities of governing. It became popular in the mainstream media to propagate this "controversy", asserting that Obama was "too idealistic" or even "naïve" and that somehow the "hard realities" of governing would, in time, make his Republican opponents' case for them. 2009 has largely been a year in which media reporting has moved in the direction of promoting false controversies and enforcing self-fulfilling prophecies for their value as marketing tools.

Many of his detractors, and even some of his wavering supporters, will be surprised to learn that in his first year, Barack Obama has already fulfilled at least 79 campaign promises. This is one of the most accomplished records of any first year in office, and it has come with considerable difficulty in working with and around a Congress fraught with obstructionism and distracted by its own mythology regarding specific points of policy, and in the face of the most uniform and inflexible opposition any president in recent decades has faced.

The 79 promises kept, as fact-checked and reported by PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service of the St. Petersburg Times, are as follows:

• No. 6: Create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in peer-reviewed manufacturing processes
• No. 15: Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners
• No. 16: Increase minority access to capital
• No. 33: Establish a credit card bill of rights
• No. 36: Expand loan programs for small businesses
• No. 40: Extend and index the 2007 Alternative Minimum Tax patch
• No. 50: Expand the Senior Corps volunteer program
• No. 58: Expand eligibility for State Children's Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)
• No. 76: Expand funding to train primary care providers and public health practitioners
• No. 77: Increase funding to expand community based prevention programs
• No. 88: Sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
• No. 110: Assure that the Veterans Administration budget is prepared as 'must-pass' legislation
• No. 119: Appoint a special adviser to the president on violence against women
• No. 125: Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq
• No. 132: No permanent bases in Iraq
• No. 134: Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan
• No. 154: Strengthen and expand military exchange programs with other countries
• No. 167: Make U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on anti-terror efforts
• No. 174: Give a speech at a major Islamic forum in the first 100 days of his administration
• No. 182: Allocate Homeland Security funding according to risk
• No. 184: Create a real National Infrastructure Protection Plan
• No. 200: Appoint a White House Coordinator for Nuclear Security
• No. 208: Improve relations with Turkey, and its relations with Iraqi Kurds
• No. 212: Launch an international Add Value to Agriculture Initiative (AVTA)
• No. 215: Create a rapid response fund for emerging democracies
• No. 222: Grant Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send money to Cuba
• No. 224: Restore funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne/JAG) program
• No. 225: Establish an Energy Partnership for the Americas
• No. 239: Release presidential records
• No. 241: Require new hires to sign a form affirming their hiring was not due to political affiliation or contributions.
• No. 247: Recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession
• No. 266: Encourage water-conservation efforts in the West
• No. 269: Increase funding for national parks and forests
• No. 270: Increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund
• No. 272: Encourage farmers to use more renewable energy and be more energy efficient
• No. 277: Pursue a wildfire prevention and management plan
• No. 278: Remove more brush, small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires
• No. 284: Expand access to places to hunt and fish
• No. 290: Push for enactment of Matthew Shepard Act, which expands hate crime law to include sexual orientation and other factors
• No. 300: Reform mandatory minimum sentences
• No. 307: Create a White House Office on Urban Policy
• No. 325: Create an artist corps for schools
• No. 326: Champion the importance of arts education
• No. 327: Support increased funding for the NEA
• No. 332: Add another Space Shuttle flight
• No. 334: Use the private sector to improve spaceflight
• No. 336: Partner to enhance the potential of the International Space Station
• No. 337: Use the International Space Station for fundamental biological and physical research
• No. 338: Explore whether International Space Station can operate after 2016
• No. 342: Work toward deploying a global climate change research and monitoring system
• No. 345: Enhance earth mapping
• No. 346: Appoint an assistant to the president for science and technology policy
• No. 356: Establish special crime programs for the New Orleans area
• No. 359: Rebuild schools in New Orleans
• No. 371: Fund a major expansion of AmeriCorps
• No. 380: Bolster the military's ability to speak different languages
• No. 391: Appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer
• No. 394: Provide grants to early-career researchers
• No. 411: Work to overturn Ledbetter vs. Goodyear
• No. 420: Create a national declassification center
• No. 421: Appoint an American Indian policy adviser
• No. 427: Ban lobbyist gifts to executive employees
• No. 435: Create new criminal penalties for mortgage fraud
• No. 452: Weatherize 1 million homes per year
• No. 458: Invest in all types of alternative energy
• No. 459: Enact tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars
• No. 460: Ask people and businesses to conserve electricity
• No. 475: Require states to provide incentives for utilities to reduce energy consumption
• No. 480: Unprecedented expansion of funding for regional high-speed rail
• No. 483: Invest in public transportation
• No. 484: Equalize tax breaks for driving and public transit
• No. 494: Share enviromental technology with other countries
• No. 498: Provide grants to encourage energy-efficient building codes
• No. 500: Increase funding for the Environmental Protection Agency
• No. 502: Get his daughters a puppy
• No. 503: Appoint at least one Republican to the cabinet
• No. 506: Raise the small business investment expensing limit to $250,000 through the end of 2009
• No. 507: Extend unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspend taxes on these benefits
• No. 513: Reverse restrictions on stem cell research

Most of these items are complex campaign pledges that Pres. Obama has been able to follow through on. Some just show he's a man who follows through on his word, something the media should take more note of. But PolitiFact's research shows a long list of serious political accomplishments, many of historic import, yet the mainstream media continues to report on the delays seen in enacting the most complex and comprehensive reforms undertaken in a generation, many of which —like healthcare reform, energy policy reform, terror prosecutions and financial regulatory reform— are actually moving forward at a historically meaningful pace, and will likely be achieved in the first half of 2010.

There are a further 226 campaign promises officially listed, after extensive fact-checking, as "in the works", as of this morning. Many of these will be accomplished in 2010, giving Pres. Obama the most extensive record of success in fulfilling specific campaign promises in US history. We can expect this fact will not be widely reported, as the mainstream news media appear determined to posture "objectivity" by refusing to report successes Obama's opponents refuse to acknowledge.

The perception that Pres. Obama has failed to aggressively pursue the progressive agenda he ran on is owing largely to the fact that his legislative and governing style is rooted in principled coalition-building. As both state senator in Illinois and as US senator from Illinois, Obama had important legislative successes that required building consensus across the aisle, with often ideologically-opposed allies on specific issues, like predatory lending and ethics reform.

It is likely the legislative schedule of 2010 will demonstrate that no president in recent history has had so many major legislative achievements, and that will be due to Obama's insisting that principled policy-making move forward, even where compromises need to be made with ideological opponents, all in the interests of progress. Perhaps no president since John F. Kennedy so deliberately sought to move a progressive legislative agenda forward, and Obama is already being compared to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson in terms of the scope and historic import of his legislative agenda. 

While critics on the right and the left claim the Obama presidency has been marked by compromise and a strict partisan divide in the Congress, it has been remarkably productive so far. In an atmosphere of crisis and deep public malaise, with hostile opposition to any substantive innovations in policy or principled, compromise, Pres. Obama has found a way to achieve real breakthroughs that will benefit the nation over the long-term, consistently taking a pragmatic approach to solving intensely complex problems. 

Pres. Obama has had the privilege, or perhaps the burden, of being the most inspiring political figure in recent memory in US politics, yet he is also the most frequently threatened. The number of alleged plots to assassinate him has been truly worrying, and some of his adversaries have been willing to speak of armed rebellion in the national media. But that vitriol and hatred should not be allowed to detract from what has been an historic and accomplished first year in office, showing real progress on issues of vital long-term relevance to the well-being of the American people. 

Everyone who pretends to speak of the quality or the success of Pres. Obama's first year in office has to be mindful that gossip-journalism and the reporting of conventional wisdom can lead to their collaborating with his least credible and most hateful opponents in spreading myths and distortions that work against the very things he was elected to do, in the interest of the American people. 

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