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Lies and the Lying Liars - By The Numbers
Sep. 12th, 2008 12:53 pmSome people were wondering about my Logo/Icon post yesterday (see cool icon by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queerbychoice to the left).
If you want an "objective"/quantitative measure of comparison between the two campaigns:
8 of the 12 items on factcheck.org’s front page as of yesterday deal with material from the McCain campaign/Republicans
3 deal with material from the Obama campaign/Democrats.
The other one deals with Palin rumors, of which there are many and most of which are quite false but also not originating from the Obama campaign.
Every night of the Republican Convention was “factchecked” but apparently only Obama’s speech was.
If we look at July, it’s 10 versus 2 (4 if you want to count Planned Parenthood and the AFL-CIO as belonging to the Obama camp, which would be rather generous since the Obama camp can’t really control what those groups say or do).
June & August appear to be about a tie, number-wise at least.
So overall, by this admittedly crude measure, almost 2x as many lies/half-truths/distortions/stretches from the McCain campaign.
Politifact breaks it down this way:
True or Mostly True:
McCain 40% (25 out of 113 True)
Obama 55% (39 out of 113 True)
Half or Barely True:
McCain 35%
Obama 29%
False/Pants On Fire:
McCain 25% (6 POF comments)
Obama 16% (0 POF comments)
So it seems at least based on one nonpartisan group and one journalistic site said group apparently finds reliable, while neither campaign is clean as a whistle, there is not equivalency here. One campaign is running a much cleaner campaign than the other. A pure count of Factcheck articles doesn’t measure the relative level of the whoppers - but Politifact does try to apply a measure, though obviously that's harder to quantify with a good level of "inter-rater reliability." But it seems the McCain campaign has told some truly spectacular falsehoods.
Beyond the numbers, personally I think that the McCain/Palin ticket's two major narratives right now about themselves are about character (with an underlying tone of social conservativism, especially for Palin) and reform (which seems to be centered on opposition to lobbyists and earmarks). The former is called seriously into question in my mind by the numbers above, among other things. The latter is called into question given that many of McCain's core team have lobbyist credentials, and Palin is neck-deep in earmarks (not to mention she hired a lobbyist to lobby for earmarks for the town she was mayor of). One of Palin's core messages, which she has now repeated dozens of times starting with her first day as VP nominee, is that she says she was against the Bridge to Nowhere earmark, but this is at best a major flip-flop and at worst an outright lie.
The major narratives from the actual McCain campaign about Obama are that he is inexperienced, a celebrity elitist, and/or that he's an extreme tax-and-spend liberal. The inexperience charge carries the most merit, but now that Palin is on the Republican ticket, there doesn't seem to be a coherent narrative that doesn't either discount Palin's experience (foreign policy experience is what matters) or McCain's (executive experience is what matters) - not to mention the odious slap at community organizers. The celebrity elitist charge is tainted by lack of acknowledgment that McCain has been a media darling for years, that his family is far richer than Obama's, and the outright lie about Obama's canceling a visit to wounded troops in Germany because reporters weren't being allowed. As for the tax-and-spend liberal charge, factcheck is chock full of corrections to McCain statements about raising taxes on "working families," and independent tax policy analysis shows Obama's plan leading to a lower deficit than McCain's (though both are shown to increase the overall deficit if fully implemented).
queerbychoice to the left).If you want an "objective"/quantitative measure of comparison between the two campaigns:
8 of the 12 items on factcheck.org’s front page as of yesterday deal with material from the McCain campaign/Republicans
3 deal with material from the Obama campaign/Democrats.
The other one deals with Palin rumors, of which there are many and most of which are quite false but also not originating from the Obama campaign.
Every night of the Republican Convention was “factchecked” but apparently only Obama’s speech was.
If we look at July, it’s 10 versus 2 (4 if you want to count Planned Parenthood and the AFL-CIO as belonging to the Obama camp, which would be rather generous since the Obama camp can’t really control what those groups say or do).
June & August appear to be about a tie, number-wise at least.
So overall, by this admittedly crude measure, almost 2x as many lies/half-truths/distortions/stretches from the McCain campaign.
Politifact breaks it down this way:
True or Mostly True:
McCain 40% (25 out of 113 True)
Obama 55% (39 out of 113 True)
Half or Barely True:
McCain 35%
Obama 29%
False/Pants On Fire:
McCain 25% (6 POF comments)
Obama 16% (0 POF comments)
So it seems at least based on one nonpartisan group and one journalistic site said group apparently finds reliable, while neither campaign is clean as a whistle, there is not equivalency here. One campaign is running a much cleaner campaign than the other. A pure count of Factcheck articles doesn’t measure the relative level of the whoppers - but Politifact does try to apply a measure, though obviously that's harder to quantify with a good level of "inter-rater reliability." But it seems the McCain campaign has told some truly spectacular falsehoods.
Beyond the numbers, personally I think that the McCain/Palin ticket's two major narratives right now about themselves are about character (with an underlying tone of social conservativism, especially for Palin) and reform (which seems to be centered on opposition to lobbyists and earmarks). The former is called seriously into question in my mind by the numbers above, among other things. The latter is called into question given that many of McCain's core team have lobbyist credentials, and Palin is neck-deep in earmarks (not to mention she hired a lobbyist to lobby for earmarks for the town she was mayor of). One of Palin's core messages, which she has now repeated dozens of times starting with her first day as VP nominee, is that she says she was against the Bridge to Nowhere earmark, but this is at best a major flip-flop and at worst an outright lie.
The major narratives from the actual McCain campaign about Obama are that he is inexperienced, a celebrity elitist, and/or that he's an extreme tax-and-spend liberal. The inexperience charge carries the most merit, but now that Palin is on the Republican ticket, there doesn't seem to be a coherent narrative that doesn't either discount Palin's experience (foreign policy experience is what matters) or McCain's (executive experience is what matters) - not to mention the odious slap at community organizers. The celebrity elitist charge is tainted by lack of acknowledgment that McCain has been a media darling for years, that his family is far richer than Obama's, and the outright lie about Obama's canceling a visit to wounded troops in Germany because reporters weren't being allowed. As for the tax-and-spend liberal charge, factcheck is chock full of corrections to McCain statements about raising taxes on "working families," and independent tax policy analysis shows Obama's plan leading to a lower deficit than McCain's (though both are shown to increase the overall deficit if fully implemented).
