When I test rhetoric against data, I find some interesting dichotomies, and over the years this process has driven me from right of center to somewhat left of center.

Here’s a case in point.  The right wing has long painted the Democrats as big spenders, eager to take the hard earned money from the honest, small business owning, risk taking entrepreneurs and give it to the lazy, shiftless, leeches of society through major handout programs and massive pork barrel programs of little benefit to the nation as a whole.

This continues even today, with a recent editorial by Peggy Noonan painting the GOP as the party of fiscal restraint.

“The GOP itself should be going forward with its philosophy, with the things it’s long stood for and, in some cases, newly rediscovered, and painting the broader picture of the implications of endless, compulsive high spending.”

Here’s the data.  Taking the federal deficit as a % of GDP, and adding up the numbers for each President’s budget terms, the cumulative deficit numbers look like this*:

Admittedly, this is a somewhat blunt analysis, but however the analysis is done, the picture is clear: Democratic Presidents, on the whole, have been remarkably responsible (fiscally). Republican Presidents have been the “compulsive high spenders”.

Of course, this is not new, or news worthy, but it continues to amaze me that the right wing still genuinely believe that Democrats are fiscally irresponsible.

* I have not included Obama because these numbers are actual (not budget) and Obama has no actual numbers.  He has proposed only one budget (although the expected deficit of nearly 10% of GDP would put him in the big spending category).

First, the facts.  The Obama administration has reached out to other countries, particularly Muslim countries, in a way that previous administrations have not.  He has already visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.  He will be visiting the world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia, in March.

These trips are part of a concerted effort to change America’s image abroad, and Obama has been extremely successful at this.  He has restored America’s soft power (for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize).  Perceptions of the US around the world have been enormously improved, particularly in Islamic countries.

The policy of the United States living up to its own values by stopping torture and closing Guantanamo, strongly supported by General Petraeus and other high ranking officers, has been instrumental in this change in perceptions.

Iraq is starting to stabilize, largely due to the surge and other strategies implemented by Robert Gates.  The December 09 quarter saw the lowest US casualty rate of any quarter since the war began in 2003.

Pakistan has been aggressive in pursuing the Taliban within its tribal areas.  With Pakistanis viewing the US more favorably, the Pakistani government is able to take these kinds of initiatives.

In 2009, more Al Qaeda fighters and senior leaders have been killed than in 2008. 

Largely as a result of these efforts, Al Qaeda and fellow organizations have increasingly turned to attacking Muslim civilians.  As these attacks continue, and the perception of the US improves, the number of Muslims supporting Al Qaeda continues to plummet.

As Peter Beinart put it recently:  In countries like Pakistan and Jordan, where al Qaeda keeps slaughtering innocent Muslims, its public support has fallen off a cliff. During the Bush years, the only thing that kept al Qaeda from complete ideological collapse was Muslim hatred of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our unblinking support for Muslim dictatorships and for Israel, and our use of torture at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Now Obama, by pledging to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and close Gitmo, and by eschewing torture … is cutting al Qaeda’s throat.

In short, the US is much closer to winning the war against Al Qaeda now than when Obama took office. 

But apparently, the Republicans would rather have tough talk and less progress.