Mitt Romney has stirred a bit of a kerfuffle with a new ad that critics say, not without justification, is misleading. As new New York Times columnist Frank Bruni notes, the ad includes a clip of Barack Obama saying: "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."
If you watched the ad carefully, that statement would leave you scratching your head. It begins with a title sequence that declares: "On October 16, 2008, Barack Obama visited New Hampshire." A series of clips from the 2008 New Hampshire speech is played, ending with the one quoted above. But why would Obama say, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," in 2008? At the time, exactly the opposite was true.
To hear the full context of the quote, go to 1:46 of this video by TalkingPointsMemo's Benjy Sarlin. Here's what Obama actually said in 2008: "Sen. McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote: 'If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.' " In fact, it appears Obama was misquoting slightly: The original quote, from an unnamed "top McCain strategist," referred to "the economic crisis," not "the economy," according to New York's Daily News.
The critics' complaint appears to be that if you don't watch the Romney ad closely, you would think Obama was speaking today in the first person. If he were, he would be as politically inept, or as intent on sabotaging his own campaign, as was the McCain staffer he was not quite accurately quoting.
This sort of deception is far from uncommon in politics. Sarlin notes that Romney's Republican rivals, including McCain in 2008, have subjected his quotes to similar doctoring. ABC News's Jake Tapper recalls that in 2008 Obama "ran a very deceptive ad that managed to misrepresent the views of both Sen. McCain and Rush Limbaugh." But it's easy for us journalists to get moralistic, since our job, after all, is to tell the truth. Bruni does just that, and has a little fun in the process:
Barack Obama hates Thanksgiving and all that it represents.
Don't believe me? Then consider his own words. On Wednesday, previewing our annual overconsumption of fowl, the president said, "Tomorrow is one of the worst days of the year to be American."
O.K., fine, he didn't say it exactly like that. I attached the bulk of a sentence near the start of his remarks to the last word of a later sentence, and if you want to be a stickler, his "worst" sentiment in its original form referred to the predicament of oven-bound turkeys, not the experience of people gorging on them.
Even so. He did utter each of those syllables, in that precise order. I smell a Mitt Romney ad in the making.By the end of his column, Bruni's tone has changed from playful to portentous: "Campaigns waged with lies presage governments racked by distrust. . . . And I don't think this country can endure much more of it without profound, lasting damage."
As it happens, there is a word for the practice of deceptively editing a quote--a word inspired by this example from 2003:
Busy chasing off Saddam, the president and vice president had told us that Al Qaeda was spent. "Al Qaeda is on the run," President Bush said last week. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. . . . They're not a problem anymore."Bush didn't actually make the preposterous statement that al Qaeda was "not a problem anymore." What he said was that al Qaeda men who had been captured or killed are not a problem anymore. Here's the full quote:
Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore.The term for this practice, coined by this column, is "dowdification," after the culprit in the Bush case, Maureen Dowd, then and still a Times op-ed columnist.
Dowd isn't the only Bruni colleague who has engaged in such deception. Last January, as we noted, former Enron adviser Paul Krugman accused Republicans, and specifically Rep. Michele Bachmann, of employing "eliminationist rhetoric"--that is, calling for the murder of her political foes--because, as Krugman put it, she was "urging constituents to be 'armed and dangerous.' " It turned out Bachmann was speaking metaphorically. She wanted them to be "armed" with information about a legislative proposal she opposed.
The Romney ad thus lives up to the standard of truthfulness practiced by the New York Times op-ed page. Decide for yourself if that is exculpatory or damning.
Dishonestly Depicting One's Opponent as Honest
What makes that Romney ad effective and clever--and please note, scolds, that these are not terms of moral approbation--is that it appears to depict Obama acknowledging something that is true and not in his interest to admit. That is, if Obama actually did say in 2011 that "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," it would be a foolishly candid confession.
Also back in January, as we noted, the New York Times editorial page falsely and maliciously blamed its media competitors for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Last week Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the Times, wrote that over the course of his journalistic career, "I've learn [sic] to appreciate the dark art of political propaganda."
He was referring to other people's practice of that dark art, not that of himself and the page he oversees. If we hadn't told you that, we'd have done to him what Romney did to Obama.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203802204577064791904405440.htmlI do find it funny that 180 was nowhere to be seen when Carney and every other leftist under the Sun was crying about Romney's ad but now he feels the need to take Mitt to task for doing the same thing the left just did.
You're almost as pathetic as Maureen Dowd. The only saving grace is that you're not paid as much as she is to regale us with this propaganda.
Let's thank the New York Times for lowering the standard to this point. And to think, people actually consider them an "objective" news source.
