Grading PolitiFact: Nancy Pelosi and The Great Job Creator

When we find we've made a mistake, we correct the mistake.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(Clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson: writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton: editor


Analysis:

Back in July of this year I published the observation that PolitiFact uses wildly inconsistent criteria when evaluating job creation claims.  PolitiFact sometimes finds it important to distinguish between job creation and net increases in the number of jobs:

Our research took us down a road traveled by PolitiFact Texas in examining various claims from Perry that most of the jobs created in the U.S. are in the Lone Star State.

PolitiFact Texas has debunked several of these eye-popping claims, noting that they are based on statistics from a minority of states that have had overall job gains in recent years.

I likewise noted how the inconsistency tended to benefit Democrats while harming Republicans.

Is the distinction important to PolitiFact in this case involving Pelosi?

Let's find out, taking it from the top:

During a Sept. 17, 2011, edition of the MSNBC show Up with Chris Hayes, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., offered a defense of the U.S. economy’s job creation record during President Barack Obama’s tenure.

"When President (George W.) Bush was president for those eight years with those tax policies, we lost jobs," Pelosi said. "In fact, more jobs were created in the second year -- that would be last year -- in the private-sector in the Obama administration than in the eight years of the Bush administration. And they want us to repeat those tax cuts at the high end which, again, did not create jobs, but they did deepen the deficit."

Pelosi makes no apparent attempt to distinguish between net job creation and gross job creation, though in fairness to her it is just as clear what she's talking about in context as it is in the other cases PolitiFact evaluated.

Unfortunately for Pelosi, it's also pretty obvious that she's blaming the job losses near the end of Bush's second term on tax policies implemented during his first term--a classic case of misleading with cherry-picked stats.  To accept her reasoning we would have to rule out the deflation of the housing bubble and the associated problems in the derivatives market as causes for those job losses.

PolitiFact calls Pelosi on the cherry-picking yet somehow succeeds in making it appear that Pelosi makes a good point (bold emphases added):

Pelosi’s statement from last weekend continues the cherry-picking approach: She cited numbers only for jobs created in 2010.

Using the period January 2010 to December 2010, the number of private-sector jobs increased by more than 1.2 million. If Pelosi had used more current numbers, she actually would have had a stronger case: From January 2010 to August 2011, the increase in jobs was almost twice as big -- nearly 2.4 million.

Even the smaller of these two numbers beats Bush’s eight-year jobs increase -- but she continues to conveniently ignore the first year of the Obama administration. If you take the entirety of Obama’s term -- January 2009 to August 2011 -- the nation has lost 1.8 million jobs, which is still worse than what happened under Bush.

Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Pelosi, argues that it’s proper to keep the first year of Obama’s tenure out of the equation.

Elshami's rationale is priceless owing to its bankruptcy:

"Republicans may wish to wipe the slate clean and forget about the financial crisis that nearly destroyed our economy and the recession that began under President Bush," said Elshami, a spokesman for Pelosi. "The figures are correct and clearly demonstrate that private-sector jobs are being created, but not fast enough – we have much more to do, and we urge Republicans to join us to pass President Obama’s American Jobs Act."

Far from wanting to forget about the financial crisis, Republicans would want to point out its existence in order to undermine Pelosi's apples-to-oranges comparison.

But again we find PolitiFact offering a torqued corrective (bold emphasis added):

We understand the impulse to make such adjustments, but in Pelosi’s formulation, this principle is applied unequally. If the first year of the Bush administration, which also included a recession, were excluded from her calculation-- this would have magically erased a loss of 2.4 million jobs under Bush. The next seven years of the Bush presidency would have shown a gain of nearly 1.8 million jobs, rather than a loss of 653,000 for the full eight-year period.

Interestingly, if Pelosi had started the count for each president at the beginning of the second year of their presidencies, it would not only have been more defensible methodologically, but it would have also backed up Pelosi's argument better. Leaving out the first year for each president, private-sector job growth under Obama would have been 2.4 million, compared to 1.8 million under Bush.

However, in none of the three statements by Pelosi that we've fact-checked did Pelosi use that method.

If we simply cut out the first year for each president then Bush is relieved of the effects of one recession on job creation while leaving the effects of a second recession.  Obama simply has recessions cut cleanly away.  And that would support Pelosi's argument?  Nonsense.  It leaves us with more apples and oranges.


PolitiFact:

Pelosi compared a select time frame in the Obama administration against the entire length of the Bush administration -- a methodology that treats the two presidents unequally. The irony is that if she had used better methodology, she would have had a sounder argument that more private-sector jobs were created under Obama than under the Bush administration. For her general point, we give Pelosi some credit. For her methodological sins -- repeated at least three times -- we give her thumbs down. On balance, we rate her statement Half True.

In the conclusion we again see PolitiFact trying to push Pelosi's underlying argument even while they criticize her details:  "For her general point, we give Pelosi some credit."  That point doesn't fly even with PolitiFact's spin added.

Because of Pelosi's "methodological sins" PolitiFact drops her down to "Half True"--yet PolitiFact Virginia gave Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia a "Barely True" grade for a claim that was otherwise accurate by the numbers and in terms of its underlying argument simply for his failure to distinguish between gross job creation and net job creation:

But the Virginia governor used net job numbers. Those are different from job creation figures, which are not compiled by the BLS or other national authority. So using net job numbers and calling them job creation figures is a case of comparing apples to oranges.

We rate McDonnell’s claim Barely True.

PolitiFact's rating of Pelosi stands as incredibly generous considering that her point comparing the tax policy of Bush with that of Obama finds absolutely no support in either her version or the PolitiFact spin version.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

Pelosi's methodological sins barely eclipsed those of the PolitiFact team, and Pelosi didn't have the temerity to call her statement a fact check.


Afters:

Here's a little update on the winners and losers with respect to PolitiFact's favoritism:

Helped by omission
 Rick Perry (True)
 Terry McAuliffe (True)
 Carolyn Maloney (True)
 Brian Moran (True)
 Mitt Romney (True)
 Austan Goolsbee (Mostly True)
 Ed Gillespie (Mostly True)
 Joe Biden (Mostly True)
 Nancy Pelosi (Half True)
 Nancy Pelosi (Half True)
 Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Half True)
 Rick Scott (Half True)
 Tim Pawlenty (Pants on Fire; harmed by omission?)
 John Boehner (False; harmed by omission)

Harmed by inclusion:
 Texas Public Policy Foundation (Half True)
 Rod Smith (False)
 Rick Perry (False)
 Bob McDonnell (Barely True)
 Rick Scott (Pants on Fire)




Correction:  Had incorrect links for the Rick Perry ratings in two spots.  Hat tip to "KnocksvilleE" for pointing out the problem.