To Be Clear on the Records

Mark Kleiman does a good job of pulling together several good sites on the comparative legislative records of Obama and McCain. At the very least, it is clear that Obama does have a solid record of legislative performance. Follow the links for the full details.

Obama has several substantial bi-partisan accomplishments. In Springfield, he sponsored successful bills for children's health care, an earned income tax credit, ethics and campaign finance reform, and videotaped police interrogations (an anti-torture measure). In Washington, it was ethics reform again and work with Richard Lugar on loose nukes. That is not a thin record. (Charles Peters has the details on Springfield, and Hilzoy has two long posts on Obama in the U.S. Senate and on Obama's style of bipartisanship.)

Against that , Williams cites two items only from McCain's 25-year career: campaign finance reform and comprehensive immigration reform. McCain did indeed co-sponsor McCain-Feingold, which his campaign is currently violating by exceeding the primary election spending cap after having agreed to take matching funds and gained both financial and ballot-placement benefit from that agreement. McCain also worked on immigration reform, which crashed and burned in the Senate because he couldn't get his own Republican colleagues to stand by him, and which he has now abandoned in favor of an enforcement-only approach that is not bipartisan at all.

Also, you often hear the canard that Obama has no specific proposals, even from "professional journalists" who should at least have done their homework. Go to this site, read it, and try to say Obama had no specific proposals. There is nothing comparable at McCain's site or anywhere else.