The Annenberg Public Policy Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit outfit that runs FactCheck.org, a site devoted to, as one might expect, fact-checking political lies, half-truths and exaggerations. They have just issued their 2009 year-end summary, in which they point out that
Although 2009 was not an election year, it kept us exceptionally busy....
If the year brought any signs that politicians as a class are getting any more truthful or less careless about their facts, we didn’t notice it. For a quick and (we hope) entertaining review of a spin-filled year, please read on to our "Analysis" section.
They describe their list as:
just a selection of what we consider our most important findings, with special emphasis on the misinformation being most heavily repeated during the year.
I have a few quarrels with their list, but mainly I think they missed an opportunity to point out some differences between Republicans and Democrats, particularly in their responses to being caught. So I am taking this opportunity to help them out.
Below the fold....
Health Care Reform (Death Panels)
First on their list is Sarah Palin's "death panel" charge - not surprising, as it also "won" Politico's Lie of the Year designation, and "The Hill" did the same. As Annenberg points out, this lie was actually started by Betsy McCaughey, who first promoted it on Fred Thompson's radio show on July 16th. Politifact debunked it at the time, and it then lay dormant until Sarah Palin posted the same claim on her Facebook page on August 7th. It was Palin who was the first to call it "death panels," which was both a clever phrasing and cleverly timed for the start of the August Congressional recess with its attendant "town halls," which is why Annenberg blames her for the lie's popularity.
What Annenberg didn't mention is that, when caught in her lie, Palin "doubled down," repeating her charge in early November and then claiming just a few days ago that "death panels" could be in the final bill, this time as the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB), even picking up Sen. Jim DeMint's false accusation that the IMAB was "unrepealable." She also claimed that the IMAB - which was added to the Senate bill this fall - was what she had been talking about along (when in fact she was originally attacking the proposal to pay for end-of-life counseling - and which was something she had endorsed as Alaska's governor).
Health Care Reform (Other)
Next on Annenberg's list of lies, conservative version, is that health care reform will lead to "socialized medicine." Again, this is a charge that, though repeatedly debunked, continues to be repeatedly made by GOP leaders such as Newt Gingrich and other right-wing shills.
Then there's the lie that HCR will let government "come between the doctor and the patient." Annenberg points out that it debunked this one as far back as last February, but they didn't mention that the GOP is still peddling this falsehood; here is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) writing in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 17th speaking as a doctor as well as a Senator and making the same charge again. (And nowhere is it mentioned that insurance companies come between doctors and patients all the time now - something HCR is intended to fix.)
Global Climate Change
Turning to the environment (I'm skipping over some other GOP lies on health care because I think you get the idea), Annenberg writes:
The GOP drastically overstated how much proposed cap-and-trade legislation would affect the average family’s energy costs — Republicans said costs would increase by $3,100 a year, more than twice the estimate of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Annenberg adds that Sen. McConnell cited a figure of $1700, but this number is still four times higher than the CBO estimate of $455. Yet Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) continued to insist, in October, that "It is the poor who will be hit hard by cap-and-trade,", though he did not give figures this time.
Inexplicably, Annenberg did not include the "climategate" lie in its list, even though FactCheck had done a complete analysis of the claim and announced that
Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded. FactCheck 10 Dec, corrected 22 Dec
Despite that, Inhofe continues to charge that it is all a hoax, as recently as Dec. 21st in a USA Today op-ed.
Other Right-Wing Lies
Annenberg's list also includes the "birther" charge that President Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to be president, another lie that, despite repeated proof that it is totally false, continues to be promoted, even by GOP congressmen, though Sen. Lindsley Graham (R-SC) called the birthers "crazy" in October.
On the Liberal Side of the Aisle...
("Liberal" is Annenberg's word.) The list includes Obama's misuse of the Otto Raddatz story - Raddatz had had his insurance canceled (through the process known as "rescission") when he was diagnosed with lymphona. In fact, Annenberg says, his insurance was only briefly canceled, and after it was restored, Raddatz was treated and lived for another 4 years. Annenberg called it "another stretch by Obama", and adds that "Obama got this whopper from an online magazine article; the author later admitted jumping to a wrong conclusion." I found the author's admission, but nothing from the White House acknowledging the error.
The next Annenberg "lie" is their reading that "Obama exaggerated by at least a factor of two when he said that health care 'causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds.'" They argue that the data show that, at worst, it would be "only one health care bankruptcy every minute." Now, Annenberg does have to make judgment calls in putting together their list, but it seems to me that 1440 bankruptcies a day is just about as bad as 2880 a day; yes, Obama overstated the number, but not the reality of the problem, and putting this on their list of top whoopers of 2009 is quite a stretch.
Another Democratic item on the list that was Recovery.gov's reports were riddled with errors, even showing some non-existent Congressional districts. Annenberg then quotes an administration official testifying to Congress about the problem, but implies that the problems with the site have not been solved. Whether this was Annenberg's intention or not, they neglected to mention that the administration is actively working on cleaning up the site.
And now for some perspective
And so on. At this point, I'm saying I've covered most of the major items on the Annenberg list, enough at any rate for me to propose a pattern:
When Democrats are caught in a lie, or an exaggeration, their tendency is to either admit fault and fix it, or to quietly drop the claim. When Republicans are caught in a lie, they will sometimes fix it or drop it as well, but in other cases they sometimes repeat and even expand on it.
This is a pattern and a generalization, with lots of exceptions, some of which I listed and cited above. But I think that, overall, the pattern is accurate and predictive.
Another generalization is that, on the Democratic side, we are more likely to find exaggerations, or misuses of anecdotes, rather than complete falsehoods. While Republicans do the same, in addition they have been caught using total falsehoods, even outrageous ones that by no stretch of the imagination can be considerable credible. There is, for example, no equivalent on the Democratic side to the "birther" or "death panel" fantasies, and certainly no Democratic elected or appointed official who engages in them.
There is a running battle here, and an out-and-out civil war over there, about Republicans' relationship to reality and their ability to read, and connect with, the voters. This (very incomplete) list shows, to my mind, that Democrats have a closer relationship with reality. My hope is that it - and similar efforts over the next year - will be useful in giving the Democrats a closer relationship with the voters as well.