I'm going to my apartment now. 3.5 years ago I would not have been going there. Now and 3.5 years ago are not the same thing. He's interested in doing things now, and since neither he nor I can turn back the clock, that's as good as either of us can do.

Just like he's just getting around to planning his re-election campaign "now".

If the President of the United States wants to be impressive -- and I don't know that APIs are where one would start -- he can do better than make announcements.

They were putting out ads against Romney at the beginning of the Republican nominee campaign.

FYI data.gov launched in May 2009 after being announced by Obama's CIO in March 2009. This isn't a new effort, it's the continuation of ongoing efforts.

For example: http://ideascale.com/userimages/sub-1/736312/ConOpsFinal.pdf is a document (Dec 2009) documenting the vision for Data.gov, and http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/mem... is a memoranda from 2009 that first started requiring the online sharing of major datasets.