Grading PolitiFact: Cheney, war on terrorists, and the reluctant Obama

This item fell in my lap not long after I wrote how PolitiFact's increased emphasis on rating punditry tended to pull PolitiFact into the punditry arena from its supposed location in objective journalism.  This new item falls right in line with that analysis, while also underscoring criticisms collected in my review of PolitiFact's 2009.

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Bill Adair:  writer, researcher
Amy Hollyfield:  editor

Analysis:

Take another look at the deck portion of the PolitiFact story, reproduced above:  "President Obama 'doesn't ... want to admit we're at war.'"  Compare that with the subsequent paraphrase:  "Cheney says Obama won't admit the U.S. at war against terrorists."

Red flags, anyone?  If the baseball announcer says "Ryan didn't want to throw a hanging curve, there" does the fact that Ryan threw a hanging curveball prove that Ryan wanted to throw a hanging curveball?  Taking away the "want" changes the argument.

With red flags now waving in the breeze, let us turn to Bill Adair's story:

In his latest attack on President Barack Obama, former Vice President Dick Cheney seized on the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner to suggest that Obama is weak on terrorism.

Forgiving Adair's flirtation with opinion journalism ("latest attack," "seized"), I think Adair has nicely captured Cheney's underlying argument.  Take careful note, because this is the last you'll see of the underlying argument from Adair.

Adair goes on to quote Cheney's full statement as presented by Politico:

"As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."

And back to Adair:

Cheney's comments echo a frequent criticism by conservatives that President Obama does not use the phrase "war on terror." We rated that True when it was made by talk show host Sean Hannity in November 2009. We noted in our ruling that Obama had said he didn't use the more general phrase "war on terror" because he viewed the conflict as a war against "some terrorist organizations."

With his statement to Politico, Cheney is going farther than Hannity did, directly alleging that Obama will not "admit we're at war."

In a few short paragraphs, Adair has reproduced the flawed logic that appeared in the deck of the story.  Adair's summary is patently unfair to Cheney.  Cheney referred directly to a number of features of Obama's response to terrorism, and those features obviously represented the ways in which Obama did not want to acknowledge the state of war.  Supposing that Cheney referred literally to the mention of a state of war represents third rate straw man creation.

Astoundingly, we ended up with this straw man despite the fact that Adair adroitly identified Cheney's true argument in his first paragraph.

Adair proceeds to rattle off a few useless examples of Obama referring to a state of war with terrorists before reaching his concluding paragraph:

Cheney has offered lots of criticism of Obama in the past year (of the claims we've rated, Cheney has earned a True and a Mostly True). His remarks here go beyond opinion because he repeatedly says that Obama won't acknowledge that the United States is at war. But even a cursory examination of Obama's statements shows this one is preposterous. Obama has often said the United States is at war against terrorist organizations -- and has ordered a massive increase in U.S. troops in Afghanistan to fight that war. So Cheney's comment isn't just False, it's ridiculously so. Pants on Fire!

With all due respect to Adair, who is the main driving force behind PolitiFact, the ridiculous aspect of this story is his avoidance of Cheney's underlying argument in favor of the focus on a highly uncharitable and highly improbable understanding of Cheney's remarks.

Cheney provided a concrete set of examples in support of his criticism of Obama.  Those examples were the context of his remark about pretending we are not at war.  By ignoring that context, Adair committed a big journalistic no-no:  He took a quotation way out of context.


The grades:

Bill Adair: F
Amy Hollyfield:  F

Afters:

How does Adair direct PolitiFact into punditry with this item?

By accurately identifying Cheney's underlying argument in the first paragraph in conjunction with a "Pants On Fire" ruling and the associated graphic, Adair succeeded in creating the impression that the true argument was discredited instead of the mere destruction of Adair's straw man.

This is among the worst sorts of things to run under the banner of objective journalism.  Adair might as well have appeared on the Hannity Show and screamed "Cheney doesn't know what he's talking about!" above the din.


But at least if he had done it during an opinion segment nobody would mistake it for objective journalism.