Inside Politics: Those 'fact-checkers'

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By Greg Pierce

Those 'fact-checkers'

"It's fair to say that John McCain has taken more heat from the fact-checkers than has Barack Obama, so much so that one prominent analyst has declared that 'lies are more central' to McCain's campaign than to Obama's," Byron York writes at National Review Online (www.national review.com).

"But if you look at the fact-checking of some of the McCain campaign's most prominent claims, you'll see that the objections raised are often matters of degree - that McCain claimed that Obama did this or that X number of times, when in fact Obama did it Y number of times - or of tone, or of verb tense. ...

"Start with one example that's been around for much of the campaign and appeared again in the debate between Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden. Palin said that Barack Obama 'had 94 opportunities to side on the people's side and reduce taxes, and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction.' Biden immediately objected, saying, 'That charge is absolutely not true' and 'It's a bogus standard.' ...

"What were the actual figures? After going through all the claims, [FactCheck.org] wrote that 'in the end, we listed votes on 54 measures under the "for higher taxes" category (and another seven votes in favor of lowering some taxes and increasing others).'

"Let's assume that FactCheck's analysis is correct. Why shouldn't McCain and Palin use the new, supposedly more accurate, numbers? When Palin said in St. Louis last week that Obama 'had 94 opportunities to side on the people's side and reduce taxes, and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction' - well, why not change it to 'had 54 opportunities to side on the people's side and reduce taxes, and 54 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction'? Wouldn't that still be a damning critique of Obama's stance on taxes?"

Mr. York, after providing other, similar examples of "fact-checking," asked: "Would the fact-checkers withdraw their complaints if McCain and Palin satisfied the objections they have raised? Not likely."

Biden's miscues

"In the popular media wisdom, Sarah Palin is the neophyte who knows nothing about foreign policy while Joe Biden is the savvy diplomatic pro. Then what are we to make of Mr. Biden's fantastic debate voyage last week when he made factual claims that would have got Mrs. Palin mocked from New York to Los Angeles?" the Wall Street Journal asked Monday in an editorial.

"Start with Lebanon, where Mr. Biden asserted that 'When we kicked - along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, "Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't know - if you don't, Hezbollah will control it." Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.'