Two Rights Don't Make a Wrong
In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005. -- President Obama, SOTU
Last Week PolitiFact rated these statements "half-true" because they decided that the President was "crediting his policies for the jobs increase." After an uproar -- I linked Paul Krugman's rebuttal -- PolitiFact backed down and deemed the statements "'mostly true' ... because [President Obama] was not making the linkage as strongly as we initially believed." Akhilleus wrote a good philosophical rebuttal to PolitiFact in comments to the Commentariat. Here's a letter I wrote to Bill Adair, the editor of PolitiFact, which is way less esoteric than Akhilleus' discourse but is something I think maybe a logic-challenged newspaperman can comprehend:
Shortly after we started PolitiFact, the housing bubble burst. -- Bill Adair
I would rate that statement as "true."
Whatever inference I derive from such a remark would be my doing, not yours. I may think that you are holding PolitiFact responsible for tanking the economy, that you are simply noting a coincidence, or that you are complaining that the mortgage on the house you bought in 2007 is underwater.
Two proximate true statements don't "merge" to constitute a "half-true" or "mostly true" statement. They remain two true statements. So if the president says, "When my stimulus program kicked in, the economy started creating jobs," each of those statements is true. Economists will argue whether or not there was a causal relationship, but the president would merely be making two proximate accurate observations.
What President Obama actually said was this: "In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005." There is nothing even slightly untruthful about either of those statements. I may infer President Obama single-handedly saved the economy, or I may infer that market forces independent of any government (or Federal Reserve) action caused the slight improvement in the jobs figures. It's not for PolitiFact to tell me what's on my mind -- or to impugn the President for what you infer is on his mind. That's what your rating does, whether you make it "half-true" or "mostly true." Get real. The statements are true. Period.
Time for another upgrade. And time for you to do some Reality Chex there at PolitiFact. Not for the first time, you're letting your success undermine your mission. When you become less truthful than the politicians you "fact-check," you become part of the problem, not part of the solution.