Remember “truthiness”? The Word of the Year 2006 that the left and the mainstream media used to attack President George W. Bush and his alleged dishonesty over weapons of mass destruction and just about everything else? Now the shoe is on the other foot–and President Barack Obama’s lies are both willful and real. His attacks on Republican rival Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital have been exposed as malicious lies. So some of Obama’s media allies, unable to defend his tactics, are questioning the notion of objective truth itself.
The New Yorker‘s Alex Koppelman, for example, takes up the Romney campaign’s response to Obama’s false claims–and instead of taking Obama to task, merely asks: “What Is Truth, Anyway?”:
Judging by this ad, and the controversy generally, it seems like this election is likely to involve a lot of what we saw this week: two Presidential campaigns constantly swapping accusations of lying back and forth. It makes for good entertainment, but it may not ever get us any closer to the real truth.
No–there is, in fact, a real and verifiable truth, which even Romney’s harshest media critics cannot deny: that he left active management of Bain Capital in February 1999, and that the Obama administration itself has spent billions of taxpayer dollars outsourcing jobs (while the Obama campaign raises cash overseas as well).
In addition, outsourcing–actually offshoring–is an irreversible part of the global economy. It creates opportunities for both the host and destination countries–lowering prices, increasing profits and creating more jobs overall. The only reason this debate–which defies economic sense–is happening is that the Obama campaign is attempting to use xenophobia to recover some of the support it has lost over the past four years, swapping “divide-and-rule” for “hope and change,” and attempting to paint Romney as unpatriotic.
The Obama campaign has lost (for a while, anyway) some of the credibility the mainstream media normally grants it so readily. By any measure–and certainly by the polls–Obama’s attacks on Bain capital have not worked. Yet Koppelman tries to spin Obama’s desperate tactics as a blow to Romney–when in fact Romney has been handed a bona fide narrative of “Obama as liar” that he can, and likely will, use through the end of the campaign.
What is truth, after all, when the person telling audacious lies is a Democrat?
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