'These guys are incorrigible fact-twisters'

Author: Shawn McCarthy

Published: October 15, 2004

In the U.S. presidential election, it seems, there are lies, damn lies and "facts."

Wednesday night, as in their first two debates, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry deluged viewers with facts and figures, frequently challenging the truthfulness of each other's assertions.

As several fact-checking organizations noted yesterday, neither candidate was particularly accurate in how he presented the facts to voters.

"These guys are incorrigible fact-twisters -- they keep on repeating things that have been rebutted and debunked not only by our organization but by the mainstream news organizations," said Brooks Jackson, director of FactCheck.org, which is run by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. "It just seems to be in their blood."

It is a seemingly inevitable fact of political campaigns everywhere that candidates distort their opponents' records and highlight what is favourable to themselves. But Wednesday night, the Republican President and his Democratic challenger presented as "fact" a litany of half-truths, distortions and outright inaccuracies that offered voters a picture of polarized universes that do not intersect -- a world according to Mr. Bush and a world according to Mr. Kerry.

The fact-free diet allowed partisans to adopt a version of the truth that accords with their beliefs, much as they do in the wider political debate and in their choice of information sources. The undecided or less-committed voters must rely on day-after analysis to sort out the fact from the spin.

Fact checkers start from the premise that there is an observable universe that can be described accurately without political bias. On its website, FactCheck.org quotes former New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as saying, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts."

"We are like a consumer advocate for voters," Mr. Jackson said. "It's our role to give voters the information they need to make an informed decision, and you are not getting that information accurately in every case from the candidates."

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said Americans have come to expect hyperbole and spin from their candidates.

"They tend to discard the specific numbers and they try to focus on the general points being made," he said. "And that's not a bad way to operate -- probably about right."

He said the presidential candidates could probably make the same points without resorting to inaccuracies, but their strategists like the sound of the hyperbole.

And so Wednesday, Mr. Kerry repeated his charge that the United States has lost 1.6 million jobs under Mr. Bush's watch, when he knows that figure includes only private-sector jobs. The actual net loss is 600,000. He also said his health plan would cover every American, when it would in fact leave several million Americans without basic insurance coverage.

Mr. Bush, meanwhile, reiterated his claim that Mr. Kerry voted 98 times for tax increases, even though 16 of those votes were on the same bill and 43 were on tax targets that did not legislate increases. The President also falsely insisted that the majority of his tax cuts went to the middle- and lower-income Americans. In fact, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center has calculated that 53 per cent of the tax cuts went to the top 10 per cent of income earners, according to FactCheck.org.

Both candidates did some of their own fact-checking, seeking to undermine the other's credibility and point out supposed inaccuracies.

When Mr. Kerry charged that Mr. Bush had once said he was unconcerned about capturing Osama bin Laden, the President grimaced and said: "Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations." In fact, the President said in March, 2002, "I am truly not that concerned about him."

Mr. Kerry, for his part, has repeatedly accused Mr. Bush of "misleading America" and returned to that theme several times in Wednesday's debate. But as the fact checkers have demonstrated, his own record on that score was not unblemished.