ROBERT PRICE: When telling the truth only blurs things
| Saturday, Nov 26 2011 10:00 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Nov 26 2011 10:00 PM
I did it again: I responded to a chain email that contained a laughably false claim. I supplied the offending forwarder with links to fact-checking organizations that had debunked the invented accusation. The sender seemed to take offense: Clearly, if I dared question her, I must be a (fill in the name of the political ideology you hate most). And besides, she wrote, "Whether or not it's technically true doesn't matter -- it's a message that needs to get out."
We expect this kind of response from rabid partisans so infused with dislike for the other side that they see no reason to check the facts. They'll latch onto a claim based on a misunderstood law -- "They're going to start taxing all real estate transactions!"-- and run with it, even if, according to Politifact.com's Bill Adair, only 4 percent of all chain email is true.
What's considerably more troubling is when prominent political leaders basically do the same thing, placing more value on effectiveness than honesty. You know: Whether or not it's technically true doesn't matter -- it's a message that needs to get out.
It happened last week, when Mitt Romney unveiled his first real campaign ad, produced for New Hampshire voters. It takes a 2008 campaign speech by Barack Obama and turns it into something it's not. Said Obama: "Sen. (John) McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, 'If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.'" The Romney ad shows Obama speaking only the last half of that sentence: "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."
When the Romney campaign was asked about the ad, reporters were given a convoluted, unintelligible answer: Taking Obama's sound bite out of context was intended in order to make the president eat his earlier words. Of course, you would have to be in on the Romney campaign's joke to understand that. Average viewers of the ad would assume Obama made that statement much more recently -- about himself. The Romney's campaign's explanation was utterly disingenuous: The intention was to make Obama "say" that he does not want to talk about the economy because to do so would doom his re-election. While Obama might actually think that, using a 3-year-old sound bite that referred to the McCain campaign's supposed efforts to distance itself from the economic policies of the Bush administration creates videotaped "evidence" that doesn't actually exist.
The irony is that there's authentic video of Obama out there in which he says exactly what the Romney campaign has falsely manipulated him into saying. In a 2009 interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, Obama admitted that if the economy fails to recover in three years, his presidency would be a "one-term proposition." Think he'd like to have that one back?
So is this what we should expect and accept from the 2012 election? Misleading and false ads are nothing new in politics. Usually, however, they are produced by special interest groups, part of a campaign technique that allows the candidate himself to disavow the tactics involved. In this case, the candidate himself has proudly placed his name on the ad. At this rate, the bar of acceptability, truthfulness and leadership will have been lowered to precedent-setting depths, and fact-checkers like Politifact.org will really have their hands full -- starting with inaugural speeches.
Chain email, foisted by uncle upon nephew and co-worker upon co-worker, is one thing -- simply the price one pays, maybe, for using email or Facebook. But manufactured (and ultimately unnecessary) propaganda directly from presidential aspirants? This democracy thing just keeps getting more complicated.
Email Editorial Page Editor Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com.
