For reasons to follow in this post, I thought it might be a good idea in this update on Obama and Romney's running PolitiFact (PF) Truth Index, to get a better look at what happened before 2010. So I haven't been posting as much, because it meant I had to go through 272 rulings for Obama and 44 rulings for Romney to date all the rulings...and do a few other things.
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| Click to enlarge: Until Romney veered way right, he had an admirable Truth Index |
This latest chart shows the accumulated Truth Index for Obama and Romney quarter to quarter starting at the end of the third quarter of 2007, when the PolitiFact operation was really gearing up, since at that time as Obama fought for the Democratic presidential nomination, Romney also tried unsuccessfully to do likewise as a Republican. A note on the chart (brackets indicating the flat trend line) indicates the result at PolitiFact once John McCain became the presumptive 2008 Republican presidential nominee: from the end of the first quarter of 2008 until early in 2010, Romney was not subjected to the Truth-o-Meter at all. In early 2010, he was interviewed as the Affordable Care Act was being signed into law by Obama (perhaps because of his "Massachusetts" knowledge), which instigated a few rulings, and here it was that Romney perhaps hinted at one his future campaign talking points when he stated that he thought Obama was too soft (full of "apologies") in his foreign policy. He disappeared from PolitiFact's prying Truth-o-Meter until early 2011, and from then on he was a fairly regular PolitiFact fact-check target until his nomination put the fact-checks on (maybe temporary) steroids. He now has 174 rulings, which I believe is the second highest for PolitiFact.
But the trend shows, just as my last post with monthly trends showed, that Romney's Truth Index fell off considerably once he announced his candidacy for the second time in 2011. Of seven Falses awarded Romney between April and September, six of them were bad enough to be made Pants on Fire. He had only one True ruling during that time. By 2012, his average leveled off somewhat around negative 15.
Obama's Truth Index has been pretty steady in the positive 12 area (with 416 rulings as of this post), although the pre-2010 trend indicates he got off to a rocky start. He started with a very respectable 30 and then plummeted in the very next quarter to a negative 11. His Truth Index for that quarter only was a negative 62.5, with four Falses, with not one True nor one Mostly True. Must have been that the PF honeymoon with Obama was over.
The CQ Connection: A theory set forth in a PolitiFact Pants on Fire analysis by my conservative counterpart was that the Congressional Quarterly had influenced a less biased approach to the rulings, that PolitiFact had gone wild with Pants on Fire once the CQ partnership "was dissolved" at the end of 2008:
When PolitiFact first launched, it existed as a joint venture between the St. Petersburg Times newspaper and the Congressional Quarterly magazine, both owned at the time by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. The numbers for 2007 and to a lesser extent for 2008 demonstrate tendencies not present in later years. Some of the differences may stem from the vigorous Democratic primary season or from the removal of input from CQ staff when the partnership was dissolved after the 2008 presidential election. Simply put, PolitiFact’s bias against Republicans as measured by its use of the “Pants on Fire” rating has intensified since the separation from CQ. Republicans during the more recent era receive a “Pants on Fire” rating 143% more often than Democrats (see Fig. 2).
Part of my effort is not just in dating the PolitiFact rulings, but determining which ones were written by a Congressional Quarterly writer. My interest was to see how the writers treated Democrats and Republicans in terms of the Truth Index, to see if there's any correlation to support PF Bias writer Bryan White's claims. But to do so is an enormously tedious exercise, because PolitiFact National has roughly 1,780 rulings to go through for almost a four year period.
So to start I did Obama and Romney (for purposes of this post), with John McCain in my sites to next do a "presidential candidate trend" comparison; but at this point I've only done less than 20 percent of the rulings, so it will be a while. That being said, a few points about the Congressional Quarterly (CQ): between Obama and Romney CQ writers wrote about 15 percent of the rulings: 39 for Obama and 9 for Romney. The Truth Index as computed for only the Congressional Quarterly writers was within half a point: a positive 5.1 for Obama and a positive 5.6 for Romney. The Pants on Fires seem to defy White's contentions, however: Romney received only one from a CQ writer, while the three Pants on Fires Obama received were all from PolitiFact writers.
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| Click to enlarge: Romney's 9 rulings don't tell us much but even with the Pants on Fire, he looks better than Obama |
The PolitiFact writers' Truth Index was topsy-turvy as well (taking the CQ writers out of the average) with Obama getting a positive 13.3, but Romney having a higher, positive 20.
What this says is anyone's guess, because we are looking at a sampling of specific candidates and not randomly selected rulings, which might provide a more "scientific" result. But my aim is ultimately to have all PolitiFact National rulings for prior to 2010 sorted and subjected to a trend analysis overall. Because MY theory is it's not the bias of PolitiFact for assigning Pants on Fire because CQ is not around to provide a good influence, or because Bill Adair has a life-size cardboard cut-out of Obama in his office. In 2009 the push was on by the Democrats for what eventually was signed into law as the Affordable Care Act, or derogatively termed "Obamacare." Way back in January of 2008 when Obama was just some senator from Illinois pining to be president, Romney gave a prescient hint of the PolitiFact 2010 Lie of the Year when he said that Obama's healthcare plan was a "government take over."
This year, for example, a cursory Truth Index calculation on all rulings on Republicans for any and all rulings related to Obamacare resulted in a highly damaging negative 75 Truth Index. What this tells me is that the Truth Index being skewed so negatively for Republicans may be the result of its political assault on the policies of the Democratic-controlled executive branch. After all, it was Mitch McConnell who said that "The single most important thing we [Republicans] want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
This is not a case of bias or that Republicans lie more: this is a case where Democrats lie less because they don't have as much at stake. If we see Republicans gain back the presidency and garner enough votes to repeal Obamacare, my guess is we will see some changes in the Truth Index. We may see a slight positive uptick in the Republican Truth Index because of fewer rulings on the evils of the ACA since it will be a moot issue: but the Democratic index will increase negatively as they fight the repeal and whatever other things the Republicans want to pass, be it "Medicare Reform" or a "Marriage Amendment." And that's the way the PolitiFact Truth Index should work.
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