Grading PolitiFact: Carly Fiorina on Barbara Boxer's national security priorities

I recently finished grading PolitiFact for an entry that granted Chris Matthews "artistic license" for saying that Dick Cheney got a "signing bonus" ("cash check") from Halliburton for running for vice president.  It makes for a powerful contrast in standards.

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Robert Farley:  writer, researcher
Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor

Analysis:

Removing any suspense regarding the "Truth-O-Meter" rating given to Carly Fiorina, PolitiFact gives her the "Pants On Fire" rating reserved for "ridiculous" claims.

Can Farley, Jacobson and Adair back it up?

The latest ad from California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina -- who is running in the Republican primary to take on incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer -- mocks Boxer for saying in 2007 that "one of the very important national security issues frankly is climate change."

After playing a clip of Boxer's statement, Fiorina faces the camera and responds, "Terrorism kills, and Barbara Boxer's worried about the weather."

No one doubts that Boxer made the comment. But we wanted to check the context of Boxer's remark and see if Fiorina was quoting it accurately.

Short of altering the audio (and video) there could be no doubt that Boxer was quoted accurately.  The only question would be whether the quotation was taken out of context.

The PolitiFact story picks up by drawing attention to three elements of the story.  Oddly enough, none of those elements includes the context of Boxer's statement.

The rest of the PolitiFact entry relates directly to those three elements, however, so it makes sense to list them:

• How well-accepted is the idea of climate change as a national security threat?
• Is it fair to say that Boxer's concern about climate change amounts to being "worried about the weather"?
• By focusing on the threat of climate change, did Boxer somehow ignore the issue of terrorism?

I'll add a question of my own:  Are any of these three points particularly relevant to the truth content of the ad?

• How well-accepted is the idea of climate change as a national security threat?

Climate change as a national security threat is very relevant if we accept that Fiorina's underlying argument is best taken to suggest that a focus on climate change indicates complete neglect of terrorism.  The PolitiFact story argues that climate change is taken seriously as a national security threat, but it downplays/ignores the fact that such considerations constitute a future worry.  Boxer emphasized the priority of the national security threat from climate change as of 2007 if we count her use of tense against her.

As for fact checking, PolitiFact cited a statement allegedly "issued by the Department of Defense" but failed to provide the citation as part of the source list (the hotlink led to the Fiorina video ad).  The report (.pdf) reads as PolitiFact reports, but the statement is relatively minor in the context of a 100 page document.  It does not support climate change as one of the major national security concerns without watering down "major."  The same goes for the opening of a CIA "Center on Climate Change and National Security."

The CIA announced recently it will open the Center on Climate Change and National Security, a small unit led by senior specialists from its directorates of intelligence, and science and technology
(BNET)

• Is it fair to say that Boxer's concern about climate change amounts to being "worried about the weather"?

That rather depends on whether one is willing to grant Fiorina some artistic license.  PolitiFact is unwilling to grant Fiorina any such license.  Once again we are treated to a dictionary definition. Fiorina is held to that.  In the real world, however, it is fair for Fiorina to claim that Boxer's statement amounts to worrying about the weather.  Fiorina's use of the term accompanied her accurate quotation of Boxer referring to "climate change."  That is the type of contextual consideration that is rightly used to detect the fair use of artistic license--the type of thing lacking during Chris Matthews' rant about Dick Cheney.

• By focusing on the threat of climate change, did Boxer somehow ignore the issue of terrorism?

PolitiFact takes for granted that Fiorina implies that Boxer's focus on climate change as a national security priority forces her to ignore the issue of terrorism.  Or, more accurately, to "somehow" ignore terrorism. The latter phrasing might be accurate since there are limits to priorities.  Heavy prioritization in one area costs in another.  In spite of PolitiFact's artful phrasing, the defense of Boxer is to the effect that she did not completely ignore terrorism.  PolitiFact uncritically reprinted a list almost certainly provided by the Boxer campaign.

And that's the fact check.  On to the concluding paragraph:

So to recap, Fiorina is guilty of a major distortion here. Boxer brought up climate change and said it was "one of the very important national security issues," but Fiorina ignores that wording and portrays it as if Boxer cited it as the only priority.

There's nothing in Fiorina's statement that may be fairly used to determine that she portrays Boxer as thinking climate change the only priority.  Fiorina, after all, provides the accurate quotation of Boxer and lets Boxer place climate change as one priority among a plurality.  Again, here's what Fiorina said:

Terrorism kills, and Barbara Boxer's worried about the weather.

Read charitably, Fiorina is questioning Boxer's national security priorities.

The PolitiFact twist ignores the literal truths of Fiorina's ad and focuses entirely on an uncharitable version of the underlying argument in rendering its verdict.  It serves as another fine of example of ideological bias from PolitiFact.

The grades:

Robert Farley:  F
Louis Jacobson:  F
Bill Adair: F


June 6, 2010:  Fixed typo in title (Fiorina for Florina)
June 7, 2010:  Fixed an additional handful of typos, added italicized emphasis in one spot 
June 12, 2010:  Reworked a sentence to omit repetition of a word root