Hyperactive Fact-Checkers
I think it’s probably a good thing that so many media organizations now run these “fact-check” items about political ads and rhetoric (except that it’s going to confuse the next generation of magazine interns about what fact-checking is about) but one thing I’ve noticed is a tendency to get overly vigilant. Just to keep things non-partisan let me, for example, defend John McCain against the inclusion of this claim in a list of “discredited claims” that he’s “blithely carried on with”:
McCain’s down-to-the-wire accusation that Obama “will raise your taxes” contradicts Obama’s tax-cut proposals for all but wealthy Americans.
To me, to consider this an example of “exaggeration and misrepresentation” is, itself, misleading. A more generous interpretation of what McCain is doing here is not that he’s lying about Obama’s plan, but that he’s accusing Obama of lying. He’s saying that Obama’s spending promises are so promiscuous that they could only be paid for through broader tax increases than he’s willing to admit to, and that Obama’s ideological proclivities will lead him to backslide on his tax promises rather than backslide on his budget promises. Now I think the reality is that Obama will probably wind up spending less than he’s promised (hard to get those bills through congress!) and running a bigger deficit than he says, but not backslide on those tax commitments. But McCain has a real argument to offer here, just as Obama has a real argument to make that McCain’s plans would — despite his protestations to the contrary — lead to cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
28 Responses to “Hyperactive Fact-Checkers”
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November 3rd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
” A more generous interpretation of what McCain is doing here is not that he’s lying about Obama’s plan, but that he’s accusing Obama of lying”
But Obama *isn’t* lying. So McCain is.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Sort of what N. P.A.T. said. MY is right that the McCain campaign could make that case for the claim that Obama will raise taxes. However, when I watched Palin’s stump speech this morning, what she actually said was that Obama has a plan to raise taxes on everyone earning less than $125,000 per year. Simply put, rather than making the case, McCain and his representative are lying. Maybe those lies are shorthand for a legitimate argument, but they’re still lies.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
McCain and Palin would need to raise the point in the manner that Yglesias did in order to get a pass on the lying. He would need to say that Obama’s plans are merely pie-in-the-sky stuff. (And it would help if he would explain, using the same reckoning, how his own plans were pie-shop-in-the-sky stuff.)
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
No post on the Iverson-Billups trade yet?? What, is something more important going on in the world?
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
The October Surprise at last – Yglesias endorses McCain! I always knew you were in the tank.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Seriously. If you don’t post on the Iverson trade, how am I supposed to know what Petey thinks about it?
I think it’s a brilliant long-term move to put Detriot in the LeBron-stakes. Short term, eh. ‘Sheed and AI will make for a fun team, but there are so many questions: what does this do to the Pistons’ D? Does AI play the point, or is Stuckey a starter now? What about Rip Hamilton? He does the same thing AI does in the offense. Where do his shots go?
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm
McCain’s tax plan results in higher deficits than Obama’s, but McCain promises a balanced budget. McCain may accuse Obama of lying, but McCain is lying without doubt.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
On the taxes accusation vs. the Medicare one, the Obama camp does have on their side the fact that Holtz-Eakin did actually say that cutting Medicare was something McCain would have to do to pay for his health plan. His intent seemed to be to claim that this would just be the usual “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but the fact remains, he did put it on the table. Since the levels of “waste, fraud, and abuse” Republicans always rely on to pay for their plans never actually exist, they’re either lying about whether they intend real cuts to Medicare, or lying about how their program is paid for, but in either case, the Obama camp didn’t just make this up, the way the McCain side is doing about taxes.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm
So I’m gonna call bullshit on you there Matt. It’s been a continuous refrain out of the McCain camp throughout the campaign that Obama will raise taxes on everyone, even those making 42k a year. I haven’t yet heard McCain make a reasoned trickle-down argument for tax cuts on the top 1%–the main goal of his rhetoric has been to convince middle-class voters that Obama will tax them to death.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
“A more generous interpretation of what McCain is doing here is not that he’s lying about Obama’s plan, but that he’s accusing Obama of lying.”
If you [McCain, not Matt] can’t communicate your point, you shouldn’t be in the business of politics. If this is what McCain believes, why the fsck doesn’t he say so explicitly? At that point we can have a good old comparison of exactly who has
“spending promises are so promiscuous that they could only be paid for through broader tax increases than he’s willing to admit to,”. After all, how does McCain imagine his longed for wars with Iran and, apparently, Russia, will be financed?
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