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The Center for American Progress and its sister organization, the American Progress Action Fund, are at the vanguard of liberal attempts to regain the initiative in the national political debate. Founded in 2003 with millions of dollars from donors hoping to more effectively counter the Bush White House and conservative groups, CAP relentlessly attacks conservatives and distributes talking points to its ideological allies.
Unfortunately, however, the group has also shown a repeated willingness to distort the facts in order to achieve its objectives. In a number of recent cases, CAP has twisted the words of its conservative opponents, misleading thousands of readers of its influential Progress Report newsletter. These tactics show that state of the art spin is increasingly indistinguishable from outright dishonesty. (Read the whole column.)
By Ben Fritz
As the presidential election reaches its final days, both campaigns are airing a barrage of dishonest claims in their advertisements. An examination of several prominent examples demonstrates just how bad the situation has become.
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John Kerry's campaign has produced two recent ads that misrepresent the President's actions and the facts in Iraq. In both cases, the very articles cited by his campaign to back up their assertions show that they are not being honest.
The first, titled Bush's Mess," claims that, "In Iraq, American troops are attacked 87 times a day." But according to the Associated Press article cited by the Kerry/Edwards campaign, the ad should say American troops "were attacked" 87 times a day. The September 25 piece (which Kerry's ad mistakenly cited to October 17) states, "Insurgent attacks are averaging 56 per day this month. In August, they averaged 87 a day - their highest level since major combat ended in May 2003."
In other words, Kerry is using figures from August to put the worst possible face on the threat American soldiers face in Iraq, when figures cited in the very same article show the situation improving in September.
And an October 20 ad titled "Middle Class Families" says that "George Bush and the right wing Republicans ... make it illegal to get low cost medicine from Canada" (click here for video). But the Washington Post article cited in the ad points out that President Bush did not "make" drug reimportation illegal - it was already prohibited when he took office. Instead, Bush has opposed proposals to change those laws.
Meanwhile, the President has received significant media attention for his newest ad, "Wolves", which says, "Even after the first terrorist attack on America ... John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America's intelligence operations. By 6 billion dollars" (click here for video). But as FactCheck.org has noted, the cuts took place over five years and amounted to less than four percent of the total intelligence budget. That stretches the meaning of the term "slash" beyond any reasonable interpretation.
In addition, the vague phrasing "first terrorist attack on America" brings up the September 11, 2001 attacks in many viewers' minds, but actually refers to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. By not specifying the time frame, the ad allows uninformed viewers of "Wolves" to infer that Kerry cast that vote after the 2001's much larger and more deadly terrorist attack (the same trick is used in Bush's ad "Risk" [click here for video]).
Bush has also released a new ad about health care titled "Complicated Plan" that echoes previous distortions of Kerry's health care proposals. In it, his campaign describes the health care plan of "John Kerry and liberals in Congress" as "A big government takeover," language that closely resembles an ad last month describing Kerry's plan as putting "big government in charge." As we showed at the time, the charge is a dishonest portrayal of Kerry's health care plan, which leaves most of the system in the hands of private insurers.
The President has made a habit of repeating previously disproved charges in his television advertising. As FactCheck.org also showed, two recent ads that have aired thousands of times, "Thinking Mom" and "Clockwork", repeat scurrilous charges. Both say Kerry voted to raise gas taxes ten times - a false charge we have previously debunked. The total of ten votes includes a number of procedural votes and votes against gas tax cuts. In fact, Senator Kerry voted for only one gas tax increase.
Both ads also allege that Kerry and liberals in Congress voted for higher taxes "350 times." But as we also pointed out back in March, this figure includes votes against tax cuts and even ones in favor of Democratic tax cut proposals that were smaller than those offered at the time by Republicans.
John Kerry and George Bush seem determined to make the last weeks of the campaign a compilation of factual contradictions and "greatest hits" of spin from the past year.
Update 10/28: A version of this post appeared in our Philadelphia Inquirer column today.
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