Politicians have few equals when it comes to stretching the truth. If you doubt that, Google “presidential fact checks” and
you will come up with more examples than you can wade through.
All of the presidential and vice
presidential candidates are guilty of saying whatever appeals to the
masses at the moment.
Our only hope for getting at the truth now rests with the
presidential debates scheduled during October. However, even that
may not clear the air. Conservatives are already complaining about
the selection of moderators.
“Why is it that the so-called
‘nonpartisan’ Commission on Presidential Debates can only pick left-wing
moderators?” asked
GOPUSA, a private company that says its mission is to spread the
conservative message throughout America. Other groups voiced
the same concerns.
The moderators are Jim Lehrer, host of “NewsHour” on PBS; Martha Raddatz, chief foreign correspondent for ABC News; Candy
Crowley, chief political correspondent for CNN; and Bob Schieffer, host of “Face the Nation” on CBS.
Like them or not, we can only hope each one will make a serious effort to clear the air over some of the wild claims made
by President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Republican vice presidential
nominee U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
Let’s begin with Obama since his speech is the latest of the four.
The president said he can create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years. Obama claimed an increase of 500,000
manufacturing jobs over the past 29 months. But the Associated Press called that “cherry picking” since manufacturing jobs
have declined by more than 500,000 since he took office.
Obama said he wants to make sure
millionaires are taxed at higher rates than their secretaries. Quoting
private and government
data, the AP said, on average, the wealthiest people in America
pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor. The
10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than
half of all federal taxes and more than 70 percent of federal
income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Biden said Romney believes in a global economy and wants a territorial tax that will create 800,000 jobs, all of them overseas.
The AP said Romney’s proposal is actually aimed at encouraging investment in the U.S., not overseas.
The vice president said the Republican Medicare plan would immediately cut benefits to more than 30 million seniors already
on Medicare. He added that the GOP plan would cause Medicare to go bankrupt by 2016.
The AP said Biden wasn’t talking about
any Medicare plan by Romney or Ryan. He was referring to what would
happen if Obama’s
health care law was fully repealed, and that isn’t likely to
happen. Ryan’s Medicare plan wouldn’t have an immediate effect
because it would apply only to future retirees, according to the
AP.
Even former President Bill Clinton, the
superstar of the Democratic National Convention, has a tendency to
forget history.
He portrayed Obama as a pragmatic compromiser, but the AP said the
president and Democrats have both played a role in grinding
compromise to a halt. It added that there are few true moderates
left in either party and Republicans aren’t the only ones
standing in the way of compromise.
Clinton and the Democrats like to talk
about the golden years of the former president, but the AP said Clinton
leaves out
the “abrupt downward turn” the economy took near the end of his
second term. It added that Clinton supported the 1999 repeal
of the Glass-Steagall Act that paved the way for banks to make
risky investments that played a role in the 2008 financial
meltdown.
Romney’s biggest fault, according to the AP, is his lack of details about how he would increase jobs, reduce the federal debt
and annual deficits and reform Medicare.
“Mitt Romney promised voters Thursday
night that he would cut deficits and put America on track to a balanced
budget as president,
but he left voters to take it on faith that he could deliver,” the
AP said. “The details behind that pledge, and the painful
spending choices involved are conspicuously lacking in his
agenda.”
Romney blames Obama for cuts to the
military, but the AP said the automatic cuts he is talking about are the
result of a bipartisan
agreement that Romney’s running mate helped steer through
Congress.
Ryan, in his acceptance speech, was
accused of taking “some factual shortcuts” when he attacked Obama’s
policies on Medicare,
the economic stimulus and the budget deficit. The AP said Ryan’s
claim that Obama raided Medicare in his health care act ignores
the fact that Ryan incorporated some of the same budget cuts as
chairman of the House Budget Committee. None of the House-passed
budgets made it through the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Obama’s stimulus funding was called
political patronage by Ryan. But the AP said Ryan asked for some of
those funds himself.
He has also had to correct the misconception that Obama was
responsible for closing a General Motors plant in Wisconsin that
halted production before the president took office.
These are just a sampling of the many misconceptions the candidates have given voters during this presidential campaign. If
the debates don’t help us separate fact from fiction, God save us from the consequences.
Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than five decades. Contact him at 494-4025 or jbeam@americanpress.com