After watching what seemed like 2,743 debates so far this presidential campaign,
all on the GOP side, I was struck once again by how careless – deliberately or
dumbly – most of the candidates have been with the facts and how easily the
moderators let them get away with it.
I expect politicians to shave,
shift and shred the truth with invented facts, but as a journalist, I’m appalled
by how they’re rarely held accountable – despite the obvious need to keep a
television program moving along, since these events are as much about
entertainment as political education.
I’m not referring just to the
legendary gaffes of Michele Bachmann, who Politi- Fact.com said had the worst
record of making false statements of any of the leading contenders, or to Texas
Gov. Rick Perry, who misrepresented the campaign contributions he got from a
vaccine manufacturer, or even to the brain freezes of Herman Cain.
The
moderators often appear more interested in preening for the cameras than
quizzing the candidates. Some may simply be poorly informed or afraid of
offending either the politicians or their friends watching at home. The
politicians have been through so many of these debates that they’ve become
skilled at evading questions by responding with well-rehearsed sound bites. Away
from the cameras reporters too often find the candidates are
inaccessible.
And unchallenged by TV journalists, those bites are
swallowed whole by millions of Americans and become part of the nation’s
political baseline.
Here’s a sampling of the unproven or downright
erroneous statements this year’s candidates were not pressed to explain:
Mitt
Romney:
• Obama is trying to turn the United States into a European-style social
welfare state.
• Obama has been unable to complete any free trade
agreements with other countries.
• Federal, state and local taxes consume
37 percent of the economy today compared with only 27% when John F. Kennedy was
president.
• “Only one president has ever cut Medicare for seniors in
this country and it’s Barack Obama.”
Rick Perry:
• “The Iranians are
moving back into Iraq at the speed of light.”
• “We have a president
that’s a socialist.”
• President Obama is waging a “war against
religion.”
Ron Paul:
• Rick Santorum is “a big-government, big-spending
individual... he became a high-powered lobbyist.”
• Only “about eight or
10” inflammatory or racist sentences appeared in his newsletters.
Newt
Gingrich:
• Romney destroyed jobs while at Bain Capital, the private equity firm
he helped set up and run.
• “Last week, when [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-] Maliki visited the president, one of the people in his entourage is a
commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”
Rick Santorum:
• Obama
backed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in cracking down on the Green
Revolution.
• No one in this country has ever died because of a lack of
health care.
OF COURSE, it’s not only the Republican presidential
candidates, it’s just that they’re most visible these days with a very hot
presidential nomination race and seemingly endless series of televised
debates.
Politicians are rarely asked follow-up questions, but when they
are they often respond with a variation of that old standby: “That may be what I
said but that’s not what I meant.” Or, even more commonly, they just change the
subject.
All the candidates have been accused of flip-flopping, and all
have fallen back on that old line, but Newt Gingrich may be the first politician
to set up a web site to explain his dazzling repertoire of shifts,
contradictions and wild statements. When he talks about change he doesn’t just
refer to the Democrats; he has a long list of things he used to believe in but
no longer does.
Santorum used that tired old line after telling a Boston
radio audience, “We always need a Jesus guy” in the campaign. After getting
slammed by the ADL for his “totally inappropriate” remarks that essentially told
Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and non-believers “you’re not part of this country,”
the ultraconservative candidate responded, “I said we always need a Jesus
candidate, I don’t mean necessarily that we always need a Christian, but we need
someone who believes in something more than themselves.”
How can you tell
whether something is accurate?
As Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said,
“Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own
facts.”
Here are some reliable, apolitical sources where can check the
facts in these and other statements, including political ads, for
yourself.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/
http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.adl.org/Internet_Rumors/default.htm
http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence
http://www.factcheck.org/http://www.politifact.com/
The writer is a syndicated columnist, Washington
lobbyist and consultant. He writes regularly for Anglo-Jewish newspapers and is
the former legislative director of AIPAC and Washington representative of the
World Jewish Congress.
