Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Obama's First Year: By The Numbers


Let me first start out by saying what better way to commemorate Obama's first full year in office than by the monumental slap in the face delivered by Scott Brown yesterday.

That said, let's browse some numbers from Obama Year One.

411 speeches/comments (including 52 alone related to the health care bill), 42 news conferences, 158 interviews, 23 townhall meetings, 46 out of town trips to 30 different states, 10 foreign trips to 21 nations, 160 flights on Air Force One, 193 flights on Marine One, 28 political fundraisers, 7 campaign rallies (all 3 candidates lost), 74 meetings with foreign leaders (including 2 bows), 26 days spent on vacation, and 29 rounds of golf. (and 0 accomplishments I'll add, other than firing up the conservative base.)

I'd like to add that these numbers, aside from the total number of vacation days, all supersede by far those of any other president in history.

Can you say pathological narcissist?

Let's do some math here.

That's a news conference every 8 days. An address about the health care bill every 7 days. A trip out of Washington every 6 days. A meeting with a foreign leader every 5 days. An interview with the media every 2 days. A flight on either Air Force One or Marine One every day. And more than one speech a day.

Now let's go a bit further and calculate some fuel costs here. The closest number I could find about the fuel cost of Air Force One was an estimate by the Defense Department in 2004 that an hour in flight costs approximately $57,000. This was before the skyrocketing cost of fuel so I'll estimate it now at $75,000 conservatively.

Being even more conservative in my estimate I'll say that each one of Mr. Obama's flights lasted no longer than an hour. That's at least $12,000,000 for flights on Air Force One alone. I could not find any fuel cost numbers for Marine One.

I'd like to end with this number, the most important of all:

National Debt
The day Obama took office: $10.626 trillion
One year later: $12.319 trillion
An increase of $1.693 trillion

I'm sure that number will continue to go up.


from CBS News (yeah, you read that right!)

3 comments:

Nate said...

Actually, I'm thinking all that time running all over the place was a good thing. Can you imagine the chaos and destruction he could have caused had he stayed in DC?

Anonymous said...

You left out some numbers, like the millions of tea partiers he inspired, the tens of thousands of Massachusetts democrats he motivated to vote republican, many for the first time in their lives.

Conservatives love Obama. He's our best recruiting tool!

Adrienne said...

You forgot one party every three day.