Obama also said "Reverend Jeremiah Wright is as much part of me as my grandmother." If only people would listen to what Obama says instead of looking to see who's the latest victim pinned under the bus.
Obama also plainly and constantly said that he'd close Gitmo (now remaining open indefinitely).
Even CBS news commented that he's named 14 unrelated issues as his administration's sole top priority.
Obama says lots of things but his support for his own words rarely outlasts the echoes of his baritone voice.
Show me a President that has accomplished everything on his agenda. Then, if you have managed to make a list of that, from that list, show me a President that accomplished everything on his agenda less than two years into his term.
That would be almost every President whose party controlled both houses of Congress when elected.
Over the past century that would be the 63rd Congress under Woodrow Wilson, successfully banning blacks from government jobs and enshrining segregation, passing the federal income tax, the red light abatement act, and the all important sponge act. Then the 64th Congress under Wilson continued the push, banning false advertising, dumping, establishing the National Park Service, workman's comp, etc.
The 67th Congress under Harding's first term (who campaigned on doing nothing) passed the act ending WW-I and an enormous amount of other legislation. The 68th Congress under Harding and Coolidge (who wanted to do less than Harding) passed the Bonus Bill, established the Foreign Service, granted full citizenship to all indigenous Americans (Native Americans), and enacted the only federal campaign finance reform until the 1970s.
FDR's Democrat Congresses passed an incredible amount of legislation, almost all of it bad, which extended and deepened the Great Depression, but at least they passed anything that occurred to their pointy little minds. FDR's subsequent Congresses also passed Lend Lease and the Pledge of Allegiance Act, and the first half of Truman's first term continued the pace. Truman lost Congress in his mid-terms to what became known as "the Do Nothing Congress." He regained Congress and kept on trucking. The only brakes on FDR or Truman's delivery on promises were occassional court decisions declaring their actions unconstitutional.
The Ike came in with a Republican Congress and reshaped American defense efforts, but then he got stuck with six years of Democrat Congresses.
Kennedy was elected along with a Democrat Congress, got an amazing amount accomplished, got shot, and Johnson picked things up, both totally transforming American society with huge legislation, such as civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, Medicaid, the Freedom of Information Act, etc. If they failed to pass anything it was only because they didn't think of it.
Nixon and Ford never held either house of Congress, so we remember Nixon for Watergate and once getting on an airplane to China and only remember Ford because Chevy Chase played him on Saturday Night Live.
Carter held both houses of Congress and passed lots of legislation on the environment, paperwork reduction, cancelling the B-1, and giving away the Panama Canal. He could pass anything he wanted, but he couldn't make the economy not suck.
Reagan only held the Senate for two years and still got an amazing amount of legislation through. If he stumped for it, it passed.
George H.W. Bush never held any part of Congress and the only part of his agenda that was left undone was "no new taxes."
Clinton started with both houses and passed so much legislation that the voters rebelled, and after losing both houses for the rest of his presidency he
still delivered on his promises.
G.W. Bush held both houses for only a few months in his first term, then held both houses for two elections, getting so much accomplished that Democrats went nuts.
Even Democrats can't figure out the current disfunction. The administration points to a handful of acts that even the public doesn't want, yet can't explain why so many emotionally powerful issues that motivated their supporters were just chucked aside like trash when they held the House and had a filibuster proof Senate majority.
So yes, Obama is pretty unique in not being able to get hardly anything he stumped for, and even what does pass doesn't support the specifics he promised. Leaders in the House and Senate have complained that he doesn't seem to care what is in the bills they vote on, just as long as he can somehow claim title to whatever random things they write in.
