Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

So Who’s Telling the Truth?

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I had recently found this interesting PolitiFact grade analysis of candidates. Guess who had made the most false statements? I know that question was not hard, Trump can’t make a statement without lying, but for chrisakes, 4 out of every 5 things he says is a lie. That’s crazy. But in the perception vs. reality department, Hillary Clinton I found interesting, during campaigns when candidates stretch the truth a bit or try to frame other candidates in a certain way Clinton still rated second in making factual statements behind President Obama.

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  1. Politifact has to make an editorial choice which statements to rate, so that can effect the outcome. You cant rate every single claim coming out of a candidates mouth. They are probably more likely to rate statements that are false, are surprising, or is independently verifiable. That said, the selection bias probably effects both candidates about equally.

    • Most publicized points by candidates are usually there. What specific ones did you think were purposely omitted? Yes, political experts make expert judgements that’s true with anything. That’s not a bias. Here’s their post about how they select statements.

    • And many of their judgment calls are questionable (at least along their continuum not so much in the binary true/false choice). That said, Trump is hitting new heights of lying. They are only choosing a small sample of his wild proclamations.

      • Politifact judgements, but I’m hopeful. The media has been challenging Trump and his surrogates lies. I think they’re biggest failure was PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for 2011:

        a statement by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) that a 2011 budget proposal by Congressman Paul Ryan, entitled The Path to Prosperity and voted for overwhelmingly by Republicans in the House and Senate, meant that “Republicans voted to end Medicare”.[15] PolitiFact determined that, though the Republican plan would make significant changes to Medicare, it would not end it. PolitiFact had originally labeled nine similar statements as “false” or “pants on fire” since April 2011.

        PolitiFact was right: there would still be a program called Medicare, but it wouldn’t be as it is now. PolitiFact succumbed to a naming fallacy. There are a lot of ways of lying by telling the truth.

        However, I’m pleased to see the media beginning to check the facts. It’s about time.rf

  2. I read Electoral-vote.com everyday during the campaign cycle. I’m less interested in their polling (See Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium instead) than their curation of daily campaign news. Here’s what they have on lying:

    The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof has taken a look, and concluded that they most certainly are not. He puts it thusly: “[T]he idea that they are even in the same league is preposterous. If deception were a sport, Trump would be the Olympic gold medalist; Clinton would be an honorable mention at her local Y.”

    Kristof starts his case with some raw data, looking at the numbers from several fact-checking sites. The Washington Post Fact-Checker finds that Trump tells flat-out lies 4.5 times as often as Clinton; Politifact says it’s nine times as often. Kristof also observes that with Clinton, the same handful of lies (email server, gunfire in Bosnia, TPP) are brought up over and over. With Trump, by contrast, there are bushels of brand-new lies every day. In fact, Politico estimated that Trump was guilty of a misstatement once every 5 minutes, while HuffPo once caught 71 distortions and inaccuracies in a single hour.

    With both parties, their approach to the truth reflects a clear strategic and philosophical choice: Clinton embraces your garden variety politician’s blend of mostly truth mixed with a bit of fiction when the truth is uncomfortable, while for Trump lying and exaggeration are core tenets. Kristof recounts an anecdote from one of Trump’s lawyers, in which he noticed that every newspaper story about Trump’s penthouse apartment listed a different number of rooms. When he asked The Donald how many rooms were actually in the apartment, the reply was: “However many they will print.” (Z)

    • There are two kinds of lies in politics. The first is a perceptive lie, something that is spinning reality to make a politician look better. Clinton erroneously claiming she was under fire in Bosnia, waving off the emails, or Obama’s 2008 position on marriage equality. These are lies meant to misdirect the public to highlight a strength or downplay a perceived liability.

      These are the kinds of white lies politicians have been telling for centuries including Washington (who lied about not wanting to be President or partial to Federalists) and Lincoln (concealed his deeply held personal opposition to slavery). Or when bitter rivals call each other friends who are fellow patriots with mutual respect.

      The second is a categorical lie, the kind that denies a proven truth. Reagan’s welfare queen, with shifting numbers for how many kids and how much money she had was a small version of this. Reagan saying he had no knowledge of Iran Contra or Nixon saying he had nothing to do with Watergate are bigger ones. It’s debatable whether WMDs fall in this category or not. These is the majority of Trump’s stump speech.

      Invented statistics and anecdotes, exaggerations of his wealth or qualifications, his donations to charity, etc. All invented. Jill Stein’s science denial on GMOs and vaccines. These are all categorical lies. They deny reality and regularly confuse fact with fiction, rather rhan accentuating a strength or downplaying a weakness. The kinds of white lies we all tell in job interviews or on first dates, and politicians have to tell on a daily basis.

      • Here’s Politifact. Just sayin’.

        The organization will pick items no matter how they are relayed as long as it’s significant in the news cycle.

        In deciding which statements to check, we ask ourselves these questions:

        Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.

        Is the statement leaving a particular impression that may be misleading?

        Is the statement significant? We avoid minor “gotchas” on claims that obviously represent a slip of the tongue.

        Is the statement likely to be passed on and repeated by others?

        Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?

        • Lie of the Year. The Lie was an opinion that was actually valid. It left the misleading impression that Medicare would continue as is under the GOP plan.

  3. They insist on rating her statements about emails Pants on Fire, whereas the facts suggest Mostly True is appropriate.

    Also, there is about as much controversy about Clinton’s capacity to tell the truth as there is about climate change. In both cases uncomfortably high numbers according polls believe that which is simply not true, thanks to manufactured controversy. Climate change is real and HRC is fundamentally trustworthy – full stop!

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