The Score
by tgirschSeptember 11th, 2008
PolitiFact.com has some nice summaries of the attacks made against Barack Obama and the attacks against John McCain, and assesses the relative truth or falsity of those attacks. It has seemed to me, following this campaign, that the attacks made by John McCain and his surrogates are more frequent and less true than those made by Barack Obama and his surrogates, and this gives me a good opportunity to test that theory.
For these purposes, I’m leaving out chain e-mails and PACs. I’m primarily concerned with what the candidates themselves, and their official surrogates and spokespeople (including convention speakers) have said. I’m also starting from the beginning of August, because there are a lot of such attacks, and many of them before the beginning of August actually come from primary opponents. I actually did not start the tally until after I wrote these first two paragraphs, and I vow to post the results no matter how they turn out.
So here’s the score:
Anti-Obama attack breakdown:
1 “True”
0 “Mostly True”
4 “Half True”
8 “Barely True”
4 “False”
2 “Pants On Fire”
Anti-McCain attack breakdown:
9 “True”
3 “Mostly True”
4 “Half True”
5 “Barely True”
2 “False”
1 “Pants On Fire”
Total scored attacks against Obama by McCain campaign and surrogates: 19 (5% “True”; 5% “Mostly True” or better”; 26% “Half True” or better; 74% “Barely True” or worse; 32% “False” or worse)
Total scored attacks against McCain by Obama campaign and surrogates: 24 (38% “True”; 50% “Mostly True” or better; 67% “Half True” or better; 33% “Barely True” or worse; 13% “False” or worse)
So, as it turns out, my impression was half-right: if these analyses are a representative sample, the Obama camp attacks somewhat more often than the McCain camp, but their attacks are much more accurate (or much less inaccurate, depending on your perspective).
Also, chew on those numbers for a minute: Only one anti-Obama attack out of nineteen could be scored better than “half-true.” That’s pretty staggering, even if unsurprising for those of us who have been following GOP politics for a while.
Cross-posted at TennesseeFree.
Categories: Politics |
In the name of appearing “balanced” a lot of political observes tend to create a false equivalency between the two parties. This shows that in at least this case, the Republicans are clearly being more dishonest.
That is, unless I am misreading the site, a place that believes the primary reason Palin fired an police chief was not his opposition to the Constitution of Alaska, his political contributions to the other side of the local government, refused to look for budget cuts within his department (this being a town which already sent a bill to rape victim’s insurance departments before she took office yet was wasteful enough on other purposes for her to get in on anti-establishment purposes), did not provide reports for his department, did not inform her of meetings under his jurisdiction that he scheduled, and actively tried to discourage citizens from going to a meeting by providing information he should have known was false. The only time she used the word “intimidate” in PolitiFact’s chief evidence is prefaced by the words “trying to”. I can’t see that as Mostly True.
I’m sorry, there are legitimate reasons to dislike her. The policy stuff, for starters, and I’m unable to find any evidence she tried to get the damned rape kit thing changed (although, like a lot of Barack Obama rumors in the middle-ground there, I’m sticking it under ‘too good/bad to take at first glance’).
Meanwhile, it labels “half-true” Obama statements regarding numbers that were 88% and 612% of the actual real-world values, because the Obama campaign had different numbers related to entirely different information.
Perfectly objective viewpoint, sure to persuade a lot of people.
For starters, since when was this post about Palin?
Anyway, if you don’t like the linked analysis site, blame the National Review — they’re the ones who cited it favorably, and they’re how I discovered it.
And your objections work both ways, by the way — they label Palin’s claim to have said “thanks, but no thanks” to the bridge to nowhere as “half true,” when it’s clearly mostly false. (They do, however, give her a “full flop” on the flip-o-meter on that issue.)
That was the one on the top of the first page when I looked at it. I can find a rather dishonest analysis of an attack ad on McCain rather quickly — the “can’t use e-mail” one currently at the top, for example, is labeled “Mostly True” when … well… apparently I’m the only person that can remember back to 2000.
As for the Bridge to Nowhere thing, she literally did say to end the project. It was only after she had lobbied for it and used the money, which they note in the text and seems to earn her the half true, but the comment is literally true. It’s the assumption people make beyond the literal phrasing — that this was some sort of amazing stance, or that she was early in fighting it, or that she never liked the federal money for it — that earn the half true.
As for the Bridge to Nowhere thing, she literally did say to end the project.
Yes, but that’s not what she said she did, now is it? She said that she “said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ to Congress,” and that is a flat-out lie, no matter how hard anybody tries to spin it. It amazes me how much Palin supporters are willing to look past that one, especially the self-described Christians, whose heads would be exploding if Obama or Biden were caught repeating a lie one-quarter that bad.
So basically, what Palin said isn’t even close to true, and even the vastly-moved-goal-posts version is only barely true if you squint at it just right. So why can’t we just call it what it is: a lie? (Also, doesn’t intent have to factor in at some point? Why, exactly, do they keep talking about the bridge to nowhere, if not to give the [false] impression that she’s some sort of principled opponent of pork and government waste?)
[...]That is one strand of Democratic foreign policy. A second strand emerged in the context of the Vietnam War. That war began under the Kennedy administration and was intensified by Lyndon Baines Johnson, particularly after 1964. The war did not go as expected. As the war progressed, the Democratic Party began to fragment. There were three factions involved in this.[...]
[...] look for the quote on his blog — it was an e-mailed response to this post that I wrote [...]