The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
PolitiFact Knuckles Under
Slate’s Dave Weigel looks at the latest PolitiFact follies: The Tampa Bay Times’s “fact checking” organization rated as only “half true” a statement from President Obama’s State of the Union Address. To quote the analysis:
In his remarks, Obama described the damage to the economy, including losing millions of jobs “before our policies were in full effect.” Then he describe the subsequent job increases, essentially taking credit for the job growth. But labor economists tell us that no mayor or governor or president deserves all the claim or all the credit for changes in employment . . . he went too far when he implicitly credited his administration policies.
As Weigel notes:
The fact was true, but the president seemed to take some sort of credit. It made no sense. He was only implicitly implying [sic] that his policies helped. He was doing this in a speech about his policies and the state of the country. The most righteous, screw-this anger arrived on the blog of Jared Bernstein, former Obama economic adviser, now full-time critic of economic scolds. “This is not half true or two-thirds true,” he snapped. “It is just true.”
Half a day later, the PolitiFact item was changed.
We’re with the Obamabots on this one. The president’s statement was factual. We’re inclined to agree that the argument was misleading, but that’s a matter of opinion, and we proudly write our opinions for a living. As for PolitiFact’s claim that what it does is “fact checking,” we rate it “Liar, liar, pants on fire, hanging by your tongue on a telephone wire.”
Gingrich Defense: At Least I’m Not Perfect
New York magazine notes a rather amusing quote from the GOP presidential race:
So far, voters in the party of “traditional family values” don’t seem to really mind that Newt Gingrich is a thrice-married, two-time adulterer. In an interview with CBN’s David Brody [Tuesday], Gingrich suggested that it’s because most people have had “very sad” moments in their own lives, which they “wish wouldn’t have occurred.” Then, he took a very unsubtle and seemingly gratuitous shot at squeaky-clean Mitt Romney:
“So, I think in that sense, it may make me more normal than somebody who wanders around seeming perfect and maybe not understanding the human condition and the challenges of life for normal people.”
This is like those funny job-interview questions, only in reverse. What would you say is your opponent’s biggest flaw? He’s too much of a perfectionist.
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