Factcheck has a post up attacking as "misleading" the Obama ad that criticizes McCain's voting record on education. The ad list 5 votes that McCain gave as cuts in funding for education. Factcheck says that one of these was a cut, one was an increase for less than the Democrats advocated, and the other three were votes against increases, which, according to Factcheck, should not be considered the same as cuts. It is on the last point, among others, that Factcheck's logic is flawed.
The problem, of course, is that a freeze in nominal dollars is a cut in real dollars so long as inflation is present, which it always is in the period under discussion. Later in their entry, Factcheck acknowledges this objection and that it could be consider valid, but steers around it by saying that the ad said "dollars were taken away", and no "dollars" were in fact taken away. But any economist will agree that "real dollars" are called that because they are the ones that count, and "real dollars" were most certainly taken away by these votes; this Factcheck does not dispute, though it treats this economically standard mode of analysis as disputable for unspecified reasons (The one case where Factcheck may be right is the 2000 budget, which is the one where McCain did vote for a nominal increase, but one that was less than President Clinton proposed. Clinton proposed an increase of 3.7%. Possibly, that was above the rate of inflation, though not by much. So in that case, it is possible that McCain was not voting for an actual cut. I don't have the data handy to analyze this, but if anyone does, please post in comments).
Factcheck also argues that they applied the same logic in attacking Republican claims that Obama's votes against tax cuts constituted votes for tax increases. But this is, in the general case, a false parallel. Although tax law is very complex, and there are specific points at which absolute amounts are relevant, for the most part taxes are figured as percentages of nominal amounts and therefore automatically adjust for inflation, that is to say, for changes in the real value of nominal amounts. Many areas where specific amounts do matter are also specifically adjusted for inflation. So, generally speaking, if one votes to keep tax rates the same, the tax levied would be the same in real, not in nominal, dollars, other things being equal. This is not equivalent to funding specified in nominal terms.
Factcheck also attacks Obama's claim that McCain proposed abolishing the Department of Education while acknowledging that McCain did, in fact, propose this. However, he proposed it "informally", not in legislation, and as part of a group of departments he wanted to cut. Obviously, brief TV ads cannot give all context to every quote, but how do either of those pieces of context changed the meaning of what was said? Are Presidential candidates to be evaluated solely on what they propose "formally"? If Obama said in an interview that the United States should without qualification normalize relations with Cuba, would this be off-limits for discussion because it is not a "formal" proposal? What if he said "I think I would" favor such an action, rather than he definitely would (McCain's statement was so qualified). If he in the same discussion, advocated improving relations with Bolivia and meeting with the Prime Minister of Spain, would his Cuba remark then be off-limits, simply because Cuba was not the only nation he mentioned, and because it was likely more controversial than some of the other components of his proposal? It is difficult to see how any analysis of candidates positions can proceed if we cannot extract specifics from more general statements for analysis, nor if we constrain discussion to address only what has been proposed in legislation.