One question sits behind Pull Up the Tape. How do you compare presidents fairly? The site answers with official numbers, on the same questions, with each term measured the same way. No president is called good or bad. The reader decides. It is the US edition of Tá nos Números, my Brazilian site, which measures Brazil's presidents on the same questions and the same rules.
Why I made it
With the next elections in mind, I had some questions. In every term, a lot goes up and down. Food prices, jobs, poverty, violence. And there is always a doubt. When a number changed, was it something the government did, or something that came from outside? And how did each president do, compared with the others? Newspapers don't help much. Even when they cite the same number, each one shows it in its own way, and the way it is shown already leans to one side. So I made this site. Neutral, made from data, with every term measured the same way.
How it stays neutral
The site stays neutral by rule. Every term gets the same space. One colour, a deep teal, belongs to neither party and marks every term. The words describe what each number did during a term, never who made it happen. Under every chart sits the same sentence. “These numbers show what happened during each term. Congress, the courts, the states, the Federal Reserve and events abroad also move them.” When an agency changes how it counts, the chart shows it. Where old and new figures don't compare, the term shows two parts.
What changed for the US
For the US edition I made four decisions. The peers are the other six G7 countries. Corruption is left out, because the only national count is convictions brought by federal prosecutors, who report to the president being measured. Health does not lead with life expectancy, because no presidency changes it. It leads with the uninsured rate, people under 65 with no health insurance, the health number that laws move within a term. Immigration is added, with the same sentence about who else moves the numbers.
See it explained
Every screen has a “See it explained” button, as in Brazil. The chart stays, everything else dims, and a short caption explains one part at a time. On the uninsured-rate screen it takes seven steps. It ends with what the chart can't say.
How every number is checked
Programs check every number. A number that fails a check stays off the site, or the site isn't built at all. A period an agency did not measure stays empty, and the screen gives the agency's reason in its own words.
The look
The look is a Swiss data journal. The opening is a typographic record. Every term is one row of large type, with the unemployment rate at its start and at its end.
Open pullupthetape.com, read the terms side by side, and tell me what you think at [email protected].