Politicians have a reputation for either manipulating the truth or leaving out important details in order to better their image to American voters. We’ve seen these glaring exaggerations or falsities in political ads, speeches or campaign representatives throughout history, well into modern day, and neither side appears to be exempt from this rule.
When it comes to campaigning, it would make sense that facts, statistics and statements would have to be as accurate as possible, to earn the trust of American voters. And to make sure politicians are telling the truth as much as possible, fact-checking organizations, such as PolitiFact and FactCheck.org, track the statistics and comments made by politicians running for office with hard numbers to ensure accuracy.
Recently, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been caught telling lies in his speeches. One example is Romney’s claim that President Barack Obama’s welfare reform plan, released on July 12, would require no work or job training, just a welfare check in the mail. Romney has used this criticism of Obama in his political ads and speeches, claiming Obama “did not understand the power of work.”
But FactCheck.org, sponsored by the nonpartisan Annenberg Policy Center, found Romney’s statements to be false – that the Obama plan would not drop work requirements as Romney had said.
Additionally, Romney claimed Obama’s plan would “gut” former President Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform legislation, which transformed welfare programs into state-run programs with federal guidelines, rather than keeping them as federal entitlements.
Clinton found ads with his name and image attached to this false statement as “especially disappointing,” according to a recent Huffington Post article.
These factual flaws should be addressed immediately. But according to Neil Newhouse, chief pollster for Romney, he and fellow candidate aides were “not going to let (their) campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”
Obama has also been caught exaggerating the truth, claiming Romney said it was “tragic” to end the war in Iraq. FactCheck.org found that Romney was actually speaking in regards to how quickly Obama pulled troops out of Iraq, not the war itself.
If a presidential campaign isn’t going to be “dictated by fact checkers,” then what will dictate the campaign? How can we trust presidential candidates if they aren’t going to consider fact checking and accuracy as vital components to the political process?
The answer is, we can’t. As American voters, we have the responsibility to ensure that what our candidates are presenting as fact is actually true. We must hold them accountable for lies, whether they are as large as welfare reform policies or as small as an exaggerated athletic feat (see Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s claim that he ran a marathon in less than three hours, when he was found to have run it in four hours).
Fact-checking organizations may seem nit-picky, and perhaps sometimes they are. But in the end, picking out multiple inaccuracies stated by candidates from either party is an essential step to holding our candidates accountable for their actions, and informing American voters when politicians lie.