How to Judge Obama

In John Dickerson's article today about Obama's budget (in which he highlights how it contains gimmicks of its own, just different and perhaps less egregious ones than have typically been used before), he raises an interesting question:

Rarely has an administration made such a big deal about its honesty and transparency...So we face a familiar question with the Obama administration of what standard to pick when evaluating the administration. Should we judge it against the Bush standard, which included lots of gimmicks—including not accounting for the Iraq war—or against the standard Obama sets for himself? It's not the first time we've come to this question. On government transparency, ethics and now truth in budgeting, the reality has fallen short of the bold claims. Obama's new ethics rules were heralded as the toughest in history, but after days of boasting we learned that there were exceptions to them. The stimulus bill was heralded as a model of transparency, but in the end, wasn't conceived transparently.

I say we do both.  Give him credit for the ways he surpasses the standards of Bush and his other predecessors but don't let him off hook for the ways that he falls short of the standards he claims to be setting.