The AP had a terrific item over the weekend under the headline, “Bush Twists Kerry’s Words on Iraq.” It was the kind of fact-checking the media, especially the AP, is supposed to do.
It captured the ongoing problem Bush has with the truth, in this case, as it relates to what John Kerry actually says about the war in Iraq.
Campaigning by bus through hotly contested Wisconsin on Friday, Bush sought to counter recently sharpened criticism by Kerry about his Iraq policies:
* He stated flatly that Kerry had said earlier in the week “he would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today.” The line drew gasps of surprise from Bush’s audience in a Racine, Wis., park. “I just strongly disagree,” the president said.
But Kerry never said that. In a speech at New York University on Monday, he called Saddam “a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell.” He added, “The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.”
The AP went on to cite several other examples just like this one of Bush mischaracterizing Kerry remarks — omitting context, changing words, etc. — as the president continues to try and deceive voters. So far, so good, at least with regards to media fact-checking.
A few hours later, however, the AP headline had changed to “Bush, Kerry Twisting Each Other’s Words.” Suddenly, instead of just a straight-up recitation of multiple examples of Bush misrepresenting Kerry’s comments, the AP wanted to make the same charge against both candidates, even though it had to struggle to balance the scales.
It’s become a common media problem.
To prove that Kerry was somehow as bad as Bush at distorting his opponent’s rhetoric, the AP noted that a recent KE04 email “accused the president of having ‘no plan to get us out of Iraq.'” The AP said this was wrong.
Bush has a plan for Iraq — Kerry just disagrees that it is working.
This is misguided on a couple of levels. First, if Bush has a plan for Iraq, he’s kept it well-hidden. “Stay the course” and “hope for the best” are not realistic approaches to a bloody and costly war, and they hardly constitute a “plan.”
Second, and more on topic, the AP threw this in as a gratuitous stretch. The reporter found several blatant examples of Bush twisting rhetoric to score cheap and deceptive points, but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, write that story on its own.
If Bush is being criticized, then Kerry has to be criticized for the same thing, whether the facts warrant it or not. It’s not just the AP; I call this the “Nick Kristof Problem.”
Kristof’s New York Times columns, desperate to be sensible and even-handed, can’t disparage the right without making an analogous charge against the left. But Kristof has done this repeatedly in instances in which it doesn’t make any sense.
Last week, for example, Kristof expressed disappointment with the last two GOP presidential nominees for taking part in the Swiftboat nonsense.
What I found most dispiriting over the last month of politicking was the sight of two senior statesmen in the Republican Party — yes, I mean you, George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole — climbing on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth bandwagon in its campaign to turn Mr. Kerry from war hero to craven braggart.
But to complain about “politics” in general, Kristof squeezed in an analogous charge against Michael Moore.
…Democrats have also engaged in below-the-belt attacks. Some of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” the Michael Moore film, was the liberal equivalent of the anti-Kerry smears.
There’s no meaningful comparison here, though Kristof would have us believe there is. Bush and Dole are top GOP leaders. One was president of the United States, for goodness sakes. Michael Moore is not an elected official or representative of Democrats on any level. He didn’t even vote for Gore against Bush four years ago.
But Kristof, anxious to show how both sides are “engaged in below-the-belt attacks,” puts them all on the same plane. He did the same thing earlier this year, substituting Moore for Ted Turner, who is even less relevant to Dem politics.
To borrow an Eric Alterman phrase, Republicans have succeeded in “working the refs.” We’ve come to a point at which the media can’t even criticize the president without some kind of tortured explanation of why his critics aren’t much better.
Even when one side is clearly wrong, reporters go out of their way to force a “pox on both your houses” story. Sometimes, only one house deserves it.