by Frank James
There’s a Nobel Prize in it for anyone who can come up with a device that, in real-time, would detect the misstatements, distortions or outright lies politicians utter and issue an immediate warning alarm to the unsuspecting public.
Instantaneous flashing lights and a loud claxon could work as warnings. Maybe the device could even administer an electric shock, like those invisible dog fences, to keep politicians on the straight and narrow, to keep the candidates candid. (Don’t Taze me, bro!)
Until then, we’ll just have to make do with truth squads like the journalists at factcheck.org and politifact.com who have examined the candidates’ utterances from the Las Vegas debate the other night and found that for all of them, truth took the occasional holiday.
Unfortunately, it takes a little time for journalists to check their sources to determine whether a candidate strayed from fact to fiction. By that time, the rest of us in the media and most of the voters have moved on.
Nevertheless, it’s an important service. So what did the truth squads find the other night? A lot. Here’s a summary of what factcheck.org found:
Clinton once again mischaracterized the 2005 energy bill, saying it had “enormous giveaways” to oil and gas companies. In truth, the measure raised taxes on those industries.
Obama accused the Bush administration of failing to make “any serious effort” to encourage use of alternative fuels or raise fuel efficiency of automobiles. In fact, President Bush has signed major bills that do both.
Edwards said he dropped his support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in part because of a scandal over forged documents. But he switched his position in 2004, and the scandal came along a year afterward.
The three candidates made sweeping claims about their intentions to remove troops from Iraq quickly, but all three admitted under questioning that they could have U.S. combat troops fighting in Iraq for years to come.
Clinton puffed up her role in stopping the “Bush administration” from taking back signing bonuses from those later wounded too seriously to complete their enlistments. Actually the Pentagon said its policy has been not to reclaim such bonuses and that a bill the Army sent to one soldier was an isolated case that was reversed.
Edwards said “you should learn to speak English” before becoming a U.S. citizen. In fact, the law already requires, with few exceptions, that applicants for citizenship “must be able to read, write, speak, and understand words in ordinary usage in the English language.”
Meanwhile, politifact.com found this:
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* Obama gave a misleading impression of a bill he passed about soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He gave the impression his legislation fixed a broad problem of soldiers being billed for meals when in fact that had been addressed two years earlier with a bill by U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young. We gave Obama a Half True.
* Clinton erred when she said the 2005 energy bill “was a big step backwards on the path to clean, renewable energy.” We gave that a False.
* But we found Clinton was accurately quoting John McCain’s comment that the United States might have troops in Iraq for 100 years. We gave that a True.
* John Edwards got it wrong when he said Clinton gets more money from the oil and gas industry than any candidate, Democrat or Republican. Two Republicans beat her, so we gave Edwards only a Half-True.
* Barack Obama correctly said he gets more in small donations (less than $200) than Clinton or Edwards.
Maybe they’ll do better at the next debate. Right. But what we really need is that instant bull detector, and quick.