Nor did Bush issue a mere 63. These claims are spreading like a virus on blogs and Twitter. Both are grossly inaccurate.

The numbers appear to derive from an email chain, the text of which can be found at Snopes. The figure was sufficiently eye-popping that I was dubious. So I checked it out. The Snopes article wasn’t up yet (and, of course, Snopes has its own issues anyway), but I found a pretty much unimpeachable source: Archives.gov.

Within moments of first seeing the 923 figure, I’d Googled it up and discovered that Obama has actually issued 130-odd EOs so far–and that Bush had a somewhat higher number than that in just his first term (Obama, of course, still has a few months to go before his first term ends, so the first term totals for both Presidents are more or less comparable).

I’m assuming most of the people I’m seeing repeat the 923/63 claim haven’t seen the actual email and are just repeating something they saw somewhere else because the original source is laughable on its face. FDR issued only 11 EOs? Obviously wrong–the actual figure is over 3,500; no-one with even passing familiarity with subject would believe the 11 figure. The email also credits Obama with having issued EOs going back to JKF, LBJ, and even Gerald Ford.

There’s plenty about Barack Obama to criticize, including the contents of more than a few of his EOs. But their quantity is no more (or less) objectionable than any of his predecessors of the last century.