September 11, 2008
Analysis: McCain's claims skirt facts, test voters
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 7:33 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- John McCain's campaign keeps telling voters that
Sarah Palin opposed a federally funded Bridge to Nowhere that, in fact,
she originally supported. It accuses Democrat Barack Obama of calling
Palin a pig, which did not happen.

Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain's
skirting of facts has stood out this week. It has infuriated and
flustered Barack Obama's campaign, and campaign pros are watching to see
how much voters disregard news reports noting factual holes in the claims.

That voter reaction could help determine who wins this presidential
election and influence the strategies of future campaigns.

Politicians usually modify or drop claims when a string of newspaper and
TV news accounts concludes they are untrue or greatly exaggerated. Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, conceded she had not come under
sniper fire in Bosnia after a batch of debunking articles subjected her
to ridicule during her primary contest against Obama.

McCain's persistence in pushing dubious claims is all the more notable
because many political insiders consider him one of the greatest living
victims of underhanded campaigning. Locked in a tight race with George
W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, McCain was
rocked in South Carolina by a whisper campaign claiming he had fathered
an illegitimate black child and was mentally unstable.

Shaken by the experience, McCain denounced less-than-truthful
campaigning. He even apologized to journalists for his own reluctance to
criticize the flying of the Confederate flag at South Carolina's state
Capitol in a bid for votes. When the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth attacked the military record of Democrat and fellow Navy officer
John Kerry in 2004, McCain called the ads ''dishonest and dishonorable.''

Now, top aides to McCain include Steve Schmidt, who has close ties to
Karl Rove, Bush's premier political adviser in 2000.

McCain and his running mate Palin, the Alaska governor, were defiant
this week in the face of fact-checking news reports. Day after day she
said she had told Congress ''no thanks'' to the so-called Bridge to
Nowhere, a rural Alaska project that was abandoned when critics
challenged its costs and usefulness. For nearly a week, major news
outlets had documented that Palin supported the bridge when running for
governor in 2006, and she turned against it only after it became an
embarrassment to the state and a symbol in Congress of out-of-control
earmarking.

The McCain-Palin campaign made at least three other aggressive claims
this week that omitted key details or made dubious assumptions to
criticize Obama. It equated lawmakers' requests for money for special
projects with corruption, even though Palin has sought nearly $200
million in such ''earmarks'' this year.

It produced an Internet ad implying that Obama had called Palin a pig
when he used a familiar phrase, which McCain also has used, about
putting ''lipstick on a pig'' to try to make a bad situation look
better. McCain supporters said Obama was slyly alluding to Palin's
description of herself as a pit bull in lipstick, but there was nothing
in his remarks to support the claim. Obama accused the GOP campaign of
''lies and phony outrage.''

The lipstick wars were fully engaged when the McCain campaign produced
another ad saying Obama favored ''comprehensive sex education'' for
kindergartners. The charge triggered the sort of headlines becoming
increasingly common in major newspapers and wire services monitoring the
factual content of political ads and speeches.

''Ad on Sex Education Distorts Obama Policy,'' was the headline on a New
York Times article Thursday. ''McCain's 'Education' Spot is Dishonest,
Deceptive,'' The Washington Post's ''Fact Checker'' article said.

Major news outlets have written such fact-checking articles for years.
''But in the last two election cycles, the very notion that the facts
matter seems to be under assault,'' said Michael X. Delli Carpini, an
authority on political ads at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg
School for Communication. ''Candidates and their consultants seem to
have learned that as long as you don't back down from your charges or
claims, they will stick in the minds of voters regardless of their
accuracy or at a minimum, what the truth is will remain murky, a matter
of opinion rather than fact.''

With Palin giving McCain's campaign a boost in the polls, Obama
supporters are nervously watching to see what impact the latest claims
will have. Surveys already show that most people believe Obama would
raise their taxes -- a regular McCain claim -- even though independent
groups such as the Tax Policy Center concluded that four out of five
U.S. households would receive tax cuts under his proposals.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds defended the campaign's statements. ''We
include factual back-up in every one of our TV spots,'' he said Thursday.

Obama, of course, has made exaggerated or questionable assertions as
well. Earlier this year, for instance, he repeated a claim that more
black men are in prison than in college, after news accounts refuted it.
He also used a McCain remark about having troops in Iraq for ''100
years'' to exaggerate McCain's proposals for being fully engaged
militarily in that country.

In general, however, Obama has been quicker to react to news accounts
challenging his accuracy. Faced with skeptical reports this year, for
instance, he stopped saying he ''worked his way'' through college, and
instead credited hard work and scholarships.

Dan Schnur, a former McCain aide who now teaches politics at the
University of Southern California, said McCain and Obama learned they
must stretch the truth ''when staying on the high road didn't work out
to their benefit.''

McCain, he said, ''tried it his way. He had a poverty tour and nobody
covered it. He had a national service tour, and everybody made fun of
it. He proposed these joint town halls'' with Obama, ''and nothing come
of it. Through the spring and early summer, that approach didn't work.
You can't blame him for taking a step back and reassessing.''