The “Annenberg Political Fact Check,” a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, is often relied upon for objective, non-partisan analysis of campaign commercials. When candidates or parties try to get away with playing fast and loose with the facts, Annenberg’s goal is to set the record straight.
Which is why it’s rather astounding that Political Fact Check scrutinized the Democratic National Committee’s new “100 years” ad on John McCain, and ended up taking the Republicans’ side.
The clear implication is that if McCain is elected, we can expect to be battling in Iraq for many decades to come. But the admakers cut off the rest of McCain’s response, which provides some badly needed context. […]
[DNC Chairman Howard Dean] is correct in one sense. His ad doesn’t say in so many words that McCain is “going to be at war for a hundred years.” But by juxtaposing McCain’s words with dramatic, violent images of war, it clearly leaves that impression. […]
Anyone who didn’t already know the fuller version of McCain’s answer could easily be fooled into thinking that McCain would be perfectly happy to see the war continue.
This isn’t fact checking; it’s decrying an ad that might give voters the wrong “impression.” The DNC, Annenberg argues, shouldn’t create ads that lead some to the wrong idea. It doesn’t matter what the ad says, Annenberg concludes; what matters is what some might think the ad means.
What kind of standard is that? Since when are perfectly accurate ads slammed?
Josh Marshall’s point from other day — unrelated to the Annenberg piece — continues to ring true.
[W]hat the McCain campaign is pushing for here is a standard in which any negative ad targeting McCain must be delivered with the McCain camp’s own spin included in order to be within bounds — a standard few politicians, to say the least, have ever been granted. […]
There is a way foreign policy questions are hashed out in quiet symposia and a way they are fought over in political campaigns. They are not the same. McCain and his surrogates are demanding something no one else gets: namely, the right to have their words repeated only in their fullest context and most generous, most amply spun interpretation. He wants his own set of rules, an election with a stacked deck.
True. Why the non-partisan Annenberg Public Policy Center wants to help in this endeavor is a mystery.
Once again, here’s the DNC ad:
There’s nothing in the DNC ad that’s false — while some, at times, have falsely suggested that McCain has vowed to keep the war going for 100 years, this commercial simply uses the senator’s own words.
There’s simply no reason for Democrats to feel even the slightest bit hesitant about using this. Even in its full context, McCain has said, on multiple occasions, that he’s comfortable leaving U.S. troops in Iraq for a century or more. The only way that’s even possible is to establish permanent bases, which are opposed by both Iraqis and Americans, and which fuel anti-American violence. He said it, he meant it, and Democrats would be insane not to tell voters about it.
And yet, McCain and Republicans have, for several weeks, launched a coordinated, carefully-orchestrated campaign to get people — everyone, really — to stop using the words “McCain,” “Iraq,” and “100 years” in the same sentence. No one can do push-back as well as the Republican Machine, and these guys are intent on making it impossible to hit McCain where it hurts.
The Annenberg Political Fact Check has fallen for the con.