This isn’t the world’s worst whopper — Ezra Klein does a brilliant takedown of Paul Ryan’s misrepresentation of Clinton on Medicare — but it’s the small stuff that adds up. Reporting on George Pataki’s campaign to focus on the national debt, Shira Schoenberg quotes Pataki: “President Obama has the worst fiscal record of any president in the history of our country.”
Problem is, that’s demonstrably untrue. He doesn’t even have the worst fiscal record of the last two presidents. Here’s a handy chart:
There is no definition of worst that can attribute to Obama a fiscal impact worse than Bush’s.
So long as reporters like Schoenberg allow figures like Pataki to spew such nonsense without consequence or correction, the public discourse is distorted and demeaned. (Note, Schoenberg’s piece was posted by editor Glen Johnson.) Pataki’s comment is nothing more than propaganda posing as factual analysis and the Globe enables it.
