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Ron Crouch has an encyclopedic knowledge of statistics. What the man knows and can remember when it comes to numbers is almost incredible.

The longtime director of the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Louisville, Crouch is one of my favorite speakers, even though his talks are usually a variation on the same theme: that there’s often a wide gulf between perception and reality.

Whether the issue is crime, the effects of suburban sprawl, government spending, economics or sexual promiscuity among teens, Crouch can cite numbers to prove that what the majority believes is often wrong.

In an article he wrote for the American Association of Museums newsletter in 2004, he said that “We are a news-addicted society; what happened today is our usual frame of reference. But it is important to analyze trends over time to determine if something is getting better or worse. Sociologists have found that our perceptions often don’t change at the same time as reality.”

I was thinking about Crouch’s views on reality vs. perception recently when I was reading a Washington Post op-ed by Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

The article, called “The Best Congress You’ll Ever Hate,” said that while the current Congress is one of the most unpopular in decades, it has also been one of the most efficient in getting things done.

This echoes a recent editorial from The Courier-Journal, which cited a Congressional Quarterly study showing that not since Harry Truman has there been a president as successful as Barack Obama in getting legislation he supports passed by Congress.

Granted, those legislative accomplishments haven’t been in the same class as Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Economic Opportunity Acts of the mid-1960s. But if you were to believe what you hear on talk radio, you would think the president and the Democrats haven’t accomplished anything.

The facts tell a different story.

Ornstein points out in his article that the $787 billion stimulus package has not only helped banks, but expanded broadband Internet service, fostered school reform in many districts, invested $70 billion in energy and environmental programs, and improved health information technology, among other things.

Other legislation has allowed the FDA to regulate tobacco, and the House has passed historic cap-and-trade energy legislation and far-reaching financial regulations to try to prevent the kind of meltdown we’ve experienced recently.

Both the House and Senate passed their versions of the most comprehensive health care reform legislation since the creation of Medicare, and likely would have passed a final bill had it not been for the untimely death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, who was the most effective advocate for health reform in the past century and the 60th vote needed to override a Republican filibuster.

It’s interesting to consider that, for all the right wing rhetoric about “socialized medicine,” the Democrats’ approach to health care reform is similar to what the Republicans offered as an alternative to President Clinton’s ill-fated health reform proposal in 1994.

It’s also not unlike what Republican Gov. Mitt Romney and the Massachusetts legislature enacted a few years ago in that state. It’s ironic that Republican Scott Brown, who supported the Romney health plan, rode the wave of anger about health reform to the United States Senate.

Then there are taxes. The Tea Party movement (the acronym stands for “taxed enough already”) would have people believe that Obama is a big “tax-and-spend liberal,” but as the pragmatic president noted in his recent State of the Union message, he hasn’t raised anyone’s income taxes “one dime.” In fact, the $288 billion of tax cuts in the stimulus bill is one of the biggest reductions in recent history.

There is also the perception that the president is “weak on defense” and the war on terror. But Obama, who kept President Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, and chief general, David Petraeus, has expanded U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Lately, the military has also been successful in capturing major Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. One must certainly give the Bush White House its share of the credit, but the current administration is winning the war on terror, which will last for many years, no matter what we do.

If I may return to Crouch’s observation that it’s important to look at the long view before making an honest assessment of something: I think it’s important that we consider the successes that this president and the Democratic Congress have had, and understand that when a country faces problems as large as the ones President Obama inherited, they can’t be fixed overnight.

It took Abraham Lincoln five years to save the union and initiate the abolition of slavery. It took Franklin D. Roosevelt more than a decade to save our country from the Great Depression and the world from the threat of fascism.

The challenges President Obama faces are not as great as those Lincoln and FDR had, but they aren’t small. It isn’t realistic to think that he could save the world financial system from collapse, end the recession and unemployment and bring the troops home from Iraq his first year.

We should give him and his party a reasonable amount of time. And we should give them credit for what they have done.

Contact Randy Patrick at rpatrick@winchestersun.com

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