Grading PolitiFact: Mitt Romney and Obama's dictator tour

In deciding which statements to check, we ask ourselves these questions:

• Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.
• Is the statement leaving a particular impression that may be misleading?
• Is the statement significant? We avoid minor "gotchas"’ on claims that obviously represent a slip of the tongue.
• Is the statement likely to be passed on and repeated by others?
• Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?

--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Josh Rogers:  writer, researcher
Bill Adair:  editor


Analysis:

Context is a wonderful thing.  Even PolitiFact shows signs of realizing it:

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.

--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

Following PolitiFact's example, let us examine the claim in the available context (blue highlights added):

(W)hen Romney was asked about Iran during a town hall in Wolfeboro, N.H., on July 5, 2011, he noted that it is "the national sponsor of terror groups across the globe" and lamented that the U.S. doesn’t do a better job of promoting itself abroad.

"The President, when he was running for office, said he was going to engage Iran, and engage North Korea. Remember in his first year he was going to visit Kim Jong-ll and Ahmadinejad and Assad and Chavez – the worst actors in the world. And how did that work out?"

What was it about the highlighted portion that drew PolitiFact's interest?

Was the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable?  Sure, at the very least in the same sense that one may verify whether it "rained cats and dogs" by checking for a mixture of feline and canine DNA in rain gauges.  In other words, it may be verifiable but whether it's worth verifying depends on Romney's meaning.

Does the statement leave a misleading impression?   Yes, removed from its context as we see it in the PolitiFact headline material PolitiFact makes it seem as though Romney accuses President Obama of breaking a pledge to go visit four renowned dictators.  But kept in its context the statement is unlikely to mislead.

Is the statement significant?  In its original context the statement does not appear significant.  The audience was unlikely to believe that Obama specifically pledged to meet with Kim Jong-ll, Ahmadinejad, Assad and Chavez, let alone meet with them specifically in their own countries.  Taken out of context, the statement is significant in that it may be used to damage Romney politically.

Is the statement likely to be passed on and repeated by others?  PolitiFact excluded, no.  Romney made the statement on July 5, 2011 and nobody appears to have taken note of it until PolitiFact blew the whistle about two weeks later.

Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?  The typical person reading the statement out of context might wonder if it is true.  The same person reading the statement in its original context probably would not.  Why not?  Because Romney does not emphasize the statement.  Romney emphasizes Obama's conciliatory attitude toward unfriendly nations and the lack of results for that approach.  It isn't important to Romney's point whether Obama literally said he would visit each of the foreign leaders.  That said, Obama's willingness to meet those tyrannical world leaders is a well-known aspect of his election campaign.  Politically aware persons would likely know the historical reference point without explanation.  Surely that is true of the unidentified reporter from whom we receive Romney's words.

Again:  What was it about Romney's statement that made PolitiFact decide to rate it?

Could it be the ease with which the statement may be taken out of context and used to discredit Romney?

To check whether Romney was right, we explored two questions: Did Obama actually say he was going to meet in the first year of his presidency with North Korean leader Kim Jong-II, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez? And did Obama say those meetings would take place in the leaders' home countries?

It's fine for PolitiFact to point out what Obama actually said.  But it's not okay for PolitiFact to ignore the context and fail to give Romney credit for his point. 

Obama was asked whether he was willing to meet each of the despotic leaders without preconditions during his first year in office.

"I would," he replied.

The resulting fact check gives us a comedy of pompous expert statements courtesy of two experts on diplomacy along with PolitiFact's tendentious explication.

The tendentiousness:

First, when he was in that town hall meeting in Wolfeboro, Romney didn’t say Obama said he was "willing to meet " the leaders; Romney said Obama "was going to."  Those are two very different things in the precise language of diplomacy. And Romney didn’t use the word "meet," as Obama and McCain did. Instead, he substituted "visit."

The pomposity:

"There is a big difference between visiting a capital and being willing to meet with another government, another government’s leaders -- so it would be unfair to suggest that’s what Obama said. He didn’t say that, and in international politics and diplomacy the difference is quite important," says R. Nicholas Burns, a professor of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Burns was Ambassador to Greece under President Bill Clinton and Ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush.

There's no need to regale us with the political difference between meeting here versus meeting there since it misses Romney's point.  On top of that, if Obama insisted on meeting here rather than there then he attaches a precondition to the meeting when the question stipulated he would not.  Perhaps we'd better stick with simply denying that Obama committed to going through with the meetings he said he was willing to have?

In fairness to Burns and Kurt Volker and as I do not possess the context in which they gave their answers, I will not rest much blame on either man for the appearance of pomposity.  That effect may result more from the way PolitiFact elicited and presented their expert opinions.

The PolitiFact ruling:

There is a small amount of truth in Romney's claim, but his wording exaggerates what Obama really said. When asked if he would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea -- "without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else" -- Obama said he would. But in the language of diplomacy, that is significantly different than saying he "was going to visit" them, which is how Romney characterized it. We find his statement Barely True.

In context, Romney's statement is essentially true.  PolitiFact apparently failed to consider the possibility that Romney's language was the type of hyperbole that serves to ridicule.  PolitiFact has reason to know the technique, since it used the first paragraph in a recent story to do the same thing to Republican presidential candidates.

It takes practice to offer charitable interpretations to those who differ with us ideologically.  Hopefully PolitiFact will eventually acknowledge the importance of charitable interpretation.  And then promptly undertake some productive practice sessions.

Don't hold your breath.

The grades:

Josh Rogers:  F
Bill Adair:  F