Interviewer : Are you still running?
Paul Ryan: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or [less].
Interviewer : But you did run marathons at some point?
Paul Ryan: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
Interviewer : I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
Paul Ryan: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
Interviewer : Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
Paul Ryan: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.
Thus did Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan describe his athletic exploits to ABC News reporter Hugh Hewett. But it was bad information: Runner’s World did some digging, and discovered that Ryan, intentionally or unintentionally, fictionally improved his best marathon time by an more than an hour. That “intentionally or unintentionally” is as important as the media and blog sleuths are making it out to be.I am in agreement with the journalists who are writing that lies about trivial matters are significant measures of a leader’s character. I have written about this too many times to count and for a long time,often in the consideration of the character of William Jefferson Clinton. Yes indeed: a national figure who thinks nothing of lying about the things he knows he doesn’t have to lie about can be assumed to be untrustworthy in situations where telling the truth is genuinely important. Ryan’s running time misstatement had another factor that makes it perplexing: if it was a lie, it was one that could be easily discovered. Why would a national figure, knowing he is under hyper-scrutiny from the media and partisan opponents, go on national television and intentionally embellish his prowess in anything when he knew or should know that his exaggeration would be discovered, and, as a result, would be used to embarrass him, give his opponents a stick to beat him with, and raise broader doubts about his veracity?
I don’t know. To me, this part of the puzzle suggests that Ryan just remembered his times wrong. He’s not stupid, and after all, the marathon in question was 20 years ago. Another possibility: at some point many years ago, Ryan began using the better time to impress people—dates, maybe—and over time began to believe his self-made myth. He was lying about the time once, but since he believed what he told ABC, he wasn’t lying in the interview. That’s plausible; I’ve known it to happen, and it would not be an indictment of Rep. Ryan’s character now.
Cutting the other way, however, is Nicholas Thompson’s point in his piece for the New Yorker:
“For someone who doesn’t run, the difference between a four-hour marathon and a two-fifty-something may seem inconsequential, and easy to confuse. But for someone who does run seriously, it’s immense. To make an analogy to an activity that Ryan is unquestionably good at, it’s like the difference between doing twenty-five pushups (not bad!) and a hundred (holy smokes!). Runners—and Ryan says he continues to be one—also just don’t forget race times. They talk about them with their friends; they think about them when running. If they’ve just missed breaking four hours, it probably bothers them a little bit. It probably bothers them particularly if their brothers run faster. People also ask about marathon times often. Note the ease with which Hewitt queried Ryan’s time. The congressman, who talks frequently about fitness, has surely been asked the same question dozens, or hundreds, of times. When did he stop answering “four hours” and start saying “a two hour and fifty-something”?
That makes sense to me, too. I often mention Bill James’ concept of signature significance on Ethics Alarms, the single act or incident that has probative value despite the tiny statistical sample it represents. Ryan’s marathon statement is only important to his qualifications and fitness to serve as Vice-President if it has signature significance, because the matter it concerns is trivial. If he knowingly and intentionally lied on national TV regarding his marathon time, I would have no trouble concluding that the statement meets the test of signature significance. No sane, trustworthy, reasonable, responsible, honest public figure who knows that his integrity and character are of special importance would do such a thing even once, on the dumbest day of his life. The conduct would be sufficient evidence for me to conclude that Paul Ryan is untrustworthy.
I don’t think this incident is clear enough to make that call, though I’m sure those who dislike and distrust Ryan already believe it is. Thompson’s piece gets it right:
“So what was it? A lie, or a mis-remembrance? Only Paul Ryan knows, and the evidence is mixed. If there aren’t more fibs of this sort—if he doesn’t magically transform himself from the bottom half to the top four per cent in other matters—I’ll let it pass. If more fibs, in more interviews and speeches, are found, I’m going to think that he lied. After Ryan’s convention speech, and its many dubious claims, Ryan Lizza wrote, ‘Ryan started this race with a reputation for honesty. He’s on his way to losing it.'”
That’s how I feel. I’m on alert, and my ethics alarms are ringing.
__________________________
Sources:
- New Yorker (Nicholas Thompson)
- The Atlantic (James Fallows)
- Hugh Hewett
Graphic: Fort Worth Weekly
Ethics Alarms 
“No sane, trustworthy, reasonable, responsible, honest public figure who knows that his integrity and character are of special importance would do such a thing even once, on the dumbest day of his life.”
The jury may still be out on Ryan but there are some politicians who come to mind when reading your statement. Newt Gingrich for one. I think your statement is a bit unfair, however. Insane people have it hard enough as it is. To suggest that Newt Gingrich is one of them just attaches more stigma to the condition. Perhaps a better way to phrase your above quote would be-
“No sane OR trustworthy…”
Lots of honest, decent, insane people out there. Not that I am one of them. The insane ones, I mean.
Let me help you put his marathon misstatement into context: It may be of a piece with his statement about the GM plant closing and about Obama (but not the Republicans) stealing $760 billion from Medicare.
What Bob said.
Ah, jan’s comment is the real comment of the day.
I don’t think mouthing deceptive Democratic talking points, even those pushed by the media, is exactly COTH worthy. Ryan may be a lair and he may not be, but none of three points he made in his convention sppech being called “lies” are, and I expect more precision here. They are, at worst, half-truths. 1) Ryan didn’t say that Obama closed the GM plant. He said that Obama promised it wouldn’t close, and that it did. Glenn Kessler at the Post, a supposed fact-checker, wrote, falsely, that the plant closed before Obama took office. That was false, and he hasn’t corrected it yet. The plant closed in 2009. 2) Saying that Obama didn’t support the recommendations of his own debt commission is 100% true. The fact that Ryan didn’t either makes this is a near-hypocritical point for Ryan to make, since he also opposed the Commission’s recommendations, but the statement itself is true, and the criticism is fair—just not coming from Ryan.
The 700 billion cut criticism is a mess, and I don’t understand why Ryan or the GOP is making it the way they are. It is worthy of criticism because Obama finally cut something out of an entitlement, Medicare, but just put it into another,.so its debt/deficit impact was nada. Of the three, this argument, coming from Ryan who also would take a chunk out of Medicare, is close to deceitful, but not exactly. The point: this guy says we want to make big cuts in Medicare, but he already did. It’s a lame argument. I don’t think its a lie.
The “Paul Ryan lies” theme is obviously a pre-planned strategy, and it is dismaying to see intelligent people swallowing it whole. Again, he might be a liar and he might not be, but the marathon statement is a lot closer to a lie then anything he said at the convention.
Ryan intended to give false impressions to his audience. That’s the definition of a lie.
Also, it wasn’t only 3 lies. Heck, even foxNews lists 4.
“Paul Ryan lies” only works if Paul Ryan lies. By claiming the strategy was preplanned, you are claiming that it was known that Ryan is likely to tell multiple lies. That says more about Ryan’s character than anything else.
1) tgt, it’s only intentionally false if he doesn’t believe it.
2) The GM anecdote was clear and true. The press intentionally misread it. George Will, I was happy to see, made the point definitively on ABC Sunday.
3) I don’t think the Commission argument misleads anyone into thinking Ryan approved of the Commission, and he didn’t so intend.
4) I have not been able to figure out the logic of the Medicare accusation. If someone with right-ward sensibilities who is smarter than Sean Hannity would explain the logic, I’d be very grateful.
Jack,
To heck with George Will, use your own powers of logic. This is from a CNN fact check post:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/30/politics/pol-fact-check-ryan-gm/index.html
“According to Ryan, Obama had said that “if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.”
Do you see the “if” clause there? IF our government is there to support you…..”
We all know that shortly thereafter, GM made the decision to close the plant, and the US government did nothing to prevent that decision. All this happened before the election, much less before inauguration. Which means the “if” clause never came true.
A faulty premise yields any conclusion you want. If the moon is made of cheese, then pigs fly. If the government supports it, then the plant will last.
Well guess what: the moon isn’t made of cheese, and the government didn’t support. What in the WORLD has this got to do with Obama?
Suppose I say, “IF Romney becomes president, then Ryan will be Vice President.” Then suppose Obama wins. Would you then come to me and say, “Charlie said Ryan would be Vice President – and he isn’t” and expect anyone to think you weren’t nuts?
It’s irrelevant. A non sequitur. A very cheap rhetorical dodge.
As I said, Ryan – and now you – calling this concatenation of events meaningful, much less “clear and true,” is an absolute distortion. I have a hard time seeing how it doesn’t fit the word “lie” to a T.
1) Agreed. Are you saying that Ryan and his speech writers are so divorced from reality that they didn’t know they were misrepresenting reality?
2) Read charlesgreen again. Yes, the plant closed, but Ryan had to misrepresent what Obama said to tar it as a problem.
3) Are you kidding me? Without assuming “commission good”, that section of the speech doesn’t work. It was claiming that Obama had a workable plan from the debt commission and he ignored it. Are you claiming that Ryan was actually making the case that Obama did the right thing?
4) The logic is simple: cutting medicare scares seniors! Who cares if these cuts are actually a good thing? We can scare seniors!
Jack,
You say, “He said that Obama promised it wouldn’t close, and that it did.” Both you and Ryan omit the absolutely critical “if” clause in Obama’s real original statement: “If the government supported the plant, it would stay open for 100 years.”
I already went through this in my response to oldgrayMary so I’m loathe to take up your space to repeat it, but briefly: from a false premise, any conclusion follows. Of course the government didn’t support it, and it did fail. Obama’s quote had absolutely nothing to do with the plant’s closing, since his “if” clause never came to fruition, and all this happened before he took office (GM made public the decision to close way back in the summertime).
What Ryan said, and you are now repeating, is the equivalent of:
Parent: “If you study hard, you’ll get good grades and graduate.”
Student then fails.
Student: “You said I’d graduate, dammit, and now I’ve flunked out.”
And this was clearly not a mis-speak, like Ryan would have us believe about his sub-3-hour marathon: he consciously, intentionally repeated it, back to back to Brian Williams.
What do you call it? If it is not a lie, what is it? Obfuscation? A non-sequitur? Smoke? Whatever it is, it doesn’t conceivably rhyme with “truth.” Not even “truthiness.”
Not at all true.
According to the rules agreed on by both parties, the Simpson/Bowles commission required a supermajority (14 votes) for the S/B commission to officially make any recommendations or reports. No such supermajority was ever reached.
What you’re erroneously calling “the recommendations of” the Simpson/Bowles commission was just a paper issued by some members of the commission, who lacked any authority to speak for the commission as a whole. The debt commission never made any recommendations for Obama to ignore, in part because Ryan voted against them. To talk as if they’d made recommendations is obviously untrue.
Notice how your logic nicely traps Obama in a catch-22. If he doesn’t support the recommendations of some members of S/B, you incorrectly slag him for ignoring his own commissions recommendations. But if Obama had supported the unofficial recommendations, then Republicans would now be slagging him for hypocritically treating recommendations that failed to pass a bipartisan commission as if they represented a fair bipartisan plan.
Barry, that’s really “lawyering” the issue. There was a majority, and the President (and anyone else) could have regarded it as a recommendation if they so chose. The super-majority was designed to give some of the pols cover. The President appointed the commission, and was free to take whatever he chose from it. It could have formed the basis for a White House initiative, and that it didn’t was Obama’s choice. And a bad one, in my opinion. Ryan’s position was stubborn and irresponsible as well.
You’re on side issues. Ryan implied the commission endorsed the report. Ryan implied the report was good by attacking Obama for not following up on it. Ryan intentionally misrepresented the situation. This is clear. You’re attempting to play word games to find a way where Ryan’s words could be true, but that’s irrelevant. What matters is what Ryan intended people to hear out of his words.
A majority wasn’t enough to make an official report, by the rules of the commission both parties wanted and agreed to. How can it be okay for Republicans to push for those rules when the commission was formed, but to ignore those same rules as soon as it’s convenient to do so in order to criticize Obama?
It was not a recommendation of the commission, and the President has no authority or ability to make it so. If he had said the commission had made a recommendation, that would have been a lie.
That said, on reflection I agree with TGT – this is a side issue. The main issue is, it was deceptive of Ryan to imply that Obama was at fault for not supporting the unofficial recommendations, when Ryan himself opposed the report. Ryan was trying to give a false impression to people who aren’t well-informed; how is that not something intelligent people can criticize?
I repeat, it was the President’s commission. Is is unbelievable chutzpa for Ryan to criticize Obama for not embracing a Commission that held promise of laying a foundation for deficit control when Ryan himself opposed it? Absolutely! But the criticism is justified, and it certainly isn’t a lie.
Ryan intentionally gave off the impression that (1) the commission had approved of findings, and (2) Ryan himself agreed with them.
It’s not just chutzpa. It’s intentional misinformation.
It’s chutzpa. It’s also arguably hypocritical, but since this audience knew, or should have known, that Ryan opposed the report, it just isn’t intentionally deceptive. This is pure confirmation bias, tgt—the media and the Democrats have built the “liar” trope, so everything is interpreted in that framework. I think it’s a cheap argument for Ryan to make—but I’ll make it, and have—Obama should have embraced the commission’s recommendations, and the fact that he didn’t tells me that the exercise was cynical and a stall from the beginning. The super-majority was for the explicit purpose of guaranteeing that such a report would be forwarded to Congress. It didn’t mean that that there were no findings, or that there was nothing for Obama to use. That’s just flat-out untrue. Why are you mouthing Democratic talking points and pretending they are objective analysis? Ryan’s point was a good one, and not deceptive at all. I agree that he—Ryan personally— was estopped from being the one to make it, but that does not, and cannot, turn an accurate statement into a “lie.”
[…] but since this audience knew, or should have known, that Ryan opposed the report, it just isn’t intentionally deceptive.
You forgot about rational ignorance. You also just said that intentionally misrepresenting something isn’t intentionally deceptive if your audience should know better.
This is pure confirmation bias, tgt—the media and the Democrats have built the “liar” trope, so everything is interpreted in that framework.
The confirmation bias is that you are assuming Ryan’s honesty, and refusing to pass the 9th grade reading comprehension test of Ryan’s speech.
I think it’s a cheap argument for Ryan to make—but I’ll make it, and have—Obama should have embraced the commission’s recommendations, and the fact that he didn’t tells me that the exercise was cynical and a stall from the beginning.
The fact that you repeatedly pretend the commision actually had recommendations tells me that you are going off of beliefs, not evidence.
The super-majority was for the explicit purpose of guaranteeing that such a report would be forwarded to Congress. It didn’t mean that that there were no findings, or that there was nothing for Obama to use. That’s just flat-out untrue.
Um, what? How does a supermajority forward the results to congress that a majority wouldn’t? Were the results forwarded to congress, here? No.
We also don’t have findings here any more than a jury finds a defendent guilty or innocent when they’re hung 7-5 or 10-2. The supermajority was the requirement for findings. It was not met.
Why are you mouthing Democratic talking points and pretending they are objective analysis?
While I did read various lists of errors, all the logic I have supplied in this thread is my own.
Why are you ignoring basic logic? Why are you equivocating? Those are at least on you.
Ryan’s point was a good one, and not deceptive at all.
Except for the part where he lied about the report and the part where he falsely implied that he backed the report.
I agree that he—Ryan personally— was estopped from being the one to make it, but that does not, and cannot, turn an accurate statement into a “lie.”
To make the point he was trying to make, he had to misrepresent both his position and the commission.
Jack, I’m not going to respond to your most recent response to me, because I’d just be repeating TGT’s argument. But I wanted to touch on this:
There are two audiences for major convention speeches. One audience is the base, who he’s trying to excite.
The other audience, however, is undecided voters who are just now tuning in to the election, now that the conventions are on network tv. Late undecided voters are a vastly important audience, because the election might be decided by them – and I think every study of late undecided voters has shown them to be low-information voters. There is zero chance that they know Ryan’s role in scuttling the commission. And Ryan, a professional politician who seems unusually smart, must realize that.
But even if it weren’t true that Ryan knows that an essential part of his audience is ignorant, what tgt said: “You also just said that intentionally misrepresenting something isn’t intentionally deceptive if your audience should know better.”
Barry, your points about some of the other Ryan statements have merit, but this one is just manufactured, and it troubles me that you wouldn’t see that. Read the quote. It just isn’t deceptive in any way. It is made up of true statements, and leaves out no essential information. What undecided voter would hear that and conclude that Ryan was blaming Obama for the closing? Only a very, very stupid one.
Jack,
This wasn’t directed at me, but I think my takedown of your point shows both the deception and the missing information.
Anyone who heard that speech and didn’t know the story would think that Obama was the reason for the closing. As noted above, if it isn’t intended to give off this misinformation, the only other possibilities for it are pro-Obama, and that’s more than unlikely.
I really, really, don’t see how you or anyone could honestly get that from Ryan’s words or his delivery. He was saying that Obama’s promises were empty, that’s all. It was clear to me, and I am far from Ryan’s “base.”
So, Ryan was saying Obama’s promises were empty by calling out something that went wrong before Obama took control. That doesn’t make sense unless Ryan was tying the plant closure to Obama.
Sure it does, and that’s what it meant: making flip, empty promises that he couldn’t keep, raising hopes based on nothing.
Actually, I think a lot of undecided voters are stupid, or at lease uneducated and likely to remain ignorant.
That aside, though, I think any normal person reading Ryan’s statement (or hearing it) would take it as suggesting that Obama made and broke a promise to rescue the plant.
Indeed, that’s how virtually all Republicans writing about this question took the statement for the first couple of days, when their defense was “it’s perfectly fair to criticize Obama about the plant closing, because the plant didn’t close until after Obama took office, contrary to what lying Democrats are saying.” It was only after it became plain that argument wouldn’t wash — possibly because someone unearthed Paul Ryan’s dated press release about the decision to close the plant — that Republicans switched to saying that Ryan wasn’t intended to criticize Obama at all.
Your argument is ridiculous, Jack. The statement can very rationally and plainly be read as suggesting that Obama broke a promise to save the plant, and in the context of a speech by the VP candidate (the traditional attack dogs of the campaigns) dedicated largely to attacks on the Obama administration (*), that’s the way most people took it. That the words can be read as just mentioning some trivia that actually makes Bush look bad, doesn’t make it fair or reasonable to suppose that Ryan intended the words that way.
That said, I agree this is a minor issue. Compared to some of his other misleading statements, this one barely bothers me at all.
(*) Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Attacking the policies of the other guys is a genuinely useful thing that politicians should definitely do.
Jack, Obama didn’t make a flip, empty promise that he couldn’t keep. He laid out a statement of cause and effect and said that HE would lead government to support the plant.
That the plant was closed before he came into power isn’t a knock on Obama.
Claiming that Obama promised to use his powers as president to keep the plant open before he became president is beyond the pale.
Three lies, Jack? Geez, you really are bending over backwards to defend your guy here. I count at least eight cases where Ryan either full-on lied or stayed technically true while being deliberately deceptive.
I am dismissing the idea that Ryan is simply ignorant and mistaken, rather than being deliberately deceptive. This was a carefully-written speech, and Ryan has spent years cultivating a reputation as a policy wonk who really knows the details and has an in-depth understanding of the budget issues; it’s not credible to believe that all these falsehoods come from Ryan not knowing the facts.
Also, I’m basing a lot of this comment on this article and this article on Wonkblog.
1) The issue about the GM plant is when GM decided to close it down, and that was in June of 2008 – as Paul Ryan himself knows, since he issued a press release at the time. The shutdown decision was finalized before Obama took office.
2) Ryan claimed the stimulus is “the largest one-time expenditure ever by our federal government.” It’s not even close to the largest (which was a bill that paid for much of our WW2 expenses, by the way).
3) Ryan said the ACA would add “new taxes on nearly a million small businesses.” That’s not true. The employer mandate on businesses that don’t provide health insurance has a small-business exemption (no business with under 50 employees are effected). There’s a tax on medical device manufacturers, but there are only about 5,000 of them in existence, so that’s not a million. There’s a new tax credit to subsidize covering employees, which will effect about a million small businesses (or more) – but that’s a tax cut, not a tax increase.
4) Ryan claimed that the stimulus was full of fraud, but the non-partisan regulators don’t agree. From Foreign Policy:
Republicans have spent literally millions of taxpayer dollars investigating Solyndra in depth, and they haven’t come up with any evidence of wrongdoing. Unless the GOP is part of a pro-Obama conspiracy, it seems likely that there wasn’t any fraud there, just a company failing due to changes in the market.
5) Ryan claimed that Republicans came up with plans (“reforms and solutions”) to address the debt, but Obama has not. This is objectively untrue; Obama’s debt plan was released, it exists, and frankly it’s a lot more plausible and detailed than Romney’s plan. You may not like it, but it’s pure partisan cant to claim that it doesn’t exist, or that it does exist but was clearly not in good faith and so doesn’t count.
6) Ryan said that Obama “created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report.” That’s not true, as Ryan knows better than anyone — the commission never issued any report, because Ryan and others on it voted against releasing any official report. Furthermore, Ryan is misleading because he strongly implied that the proposal should have been supported (why else criticize Obama for not supporting it?), when he himself opposed it.
7) Ryan criticized Obama by saying that Obama’s term “began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America.” That’s technically true, but it’s certainly deceptive, because it implies the downgrading was Obama’s fault. Ryan knows perfectly well that the Standards and Poor downgrade was due to a standoff in Congress, a standoff that Ryan himself was a leader on. S&P also downgraded because of Republican unwillingness to raise taxes as part of a plan to reduce the deficit. We know this because S&P said so, explicitly, in their official statements explaining the downgrade.
8) “President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him.” The overwhelming majority of Obama-era debt was “added” by laws passed under George Bush — specifically, the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq War. Obama ended the Iraq War (continuing Bush policy, to be fair) and has frequently called for reducing the Bush tax cuts.
In contrast, Ryan made only two policy-based critiques of Obama that were true. 1) It’s true that Obama cut Medicare. Ryan endorsed the same cuts until three weeks ago, but that doesn’t make his critique untrue, it just makes him a hypocrite. 2) He’s right that Obama didn’t fix the housing crisis.
A totally subjective opinion, which you don’t back up with any evidence at all.
Even if you’re right – and I doubt you are – so what? That’s what’s called an ad hom fallacy. The truth or falseness of the claim “Paul Ryan lied and misled a lot in his convention speech” isn’t dependent on whether or not the Dems had a pre-planned strategy. Even if the Dems had this strategy pre-planned, that doesn’t magically make it ethical for Paul Ryan to lie and mislead a lot. It’s just logically irrelevant.
If you’re willing to give any benefit of the doubt at all to people who aren’t Republicans, then you’d have to admit that criticizing Ryan for lying a lot in his speech might be based on a good-faith belief that he lied a lot in his speech – which is a view strongly supported by evidence. What you’re doing here is suggesting that intelligent people are wrong to call out Ryan when he lies. That’s the opposite of ethics.
Either you believe that lies about policy are wrong and should be called out even when the liar is a candidate you like and support; or you don’t really believe lies are wrong, in which case you just say so.
I think he misrepresented a lot and was careless with his facts. I think the Democratic “narrative” is that Ryan is unusual in this regard, even by politician standards. I believe that is a strategy, aided by the media, and is probably untrue and unfair. I acknowledge that it might not be.
Since I don’t believe that the similar deceits of other politicians in this election—Obama, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Pelosi,Biden, Reid among the Democrats—justify or excuse whatever Ryan has done, I’m not going to cite their catalogue of similar dishonesty. It’s all insulting. But pretending that Ryan is unusual or especially bad in this regard is just partisanship and confirmation bias. Your 1, 6, and 7 are quibbling. 8, in my opinion, is dishonest. The President could have stopped Bush’s tax cuts—he didn’t: they are his responsibility. Ditto the war in Afghanistan. 5 is really lame. Obama’s “debt plan” didn’t do anything to address the debt in a significant way; it is not unfair to say that it was neither serious nor genuine, or honestly proposed. 2 is calling hyperbole a lie….that’s defensible, but I think unfair in this case. The stimulus was damn big—what difference does it make where it falls on the list? Obama said he had the most successful first term except for three predecessors–and he ignored James K. Polk. That was hyperbole too, and more absurd than what Ryan said.
4? Do you know what “full” meant? Neither do I, but I could certain justify Ryan’s apparent definition of it. The stimulus money that went to MSNBC for policy ads weren’t technically fraud, but they were a misuse of the funds. I don’t want to have link wars, but you know there are different accountings of that money that show it going to unions and other places that weren’t the “shovel-ready jobs” Obama promised. Is Ryan using fraud in the technical sense, or saying that a lot of the stimulus was really pork? I heard it the latter way, and if so, that’s an opinion, not an untruth. As for 3, Ryan’s’ one of the few who has actually read the ACA in its current version. I haven’t, and I presume you haven’t, and I even doubt that those calling this statement a lie have read it. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. I think the costs on small businesses of the ACA are going to bite, and the small business owners that I know think so too.
I think that by “quibbling,” you mean to say that you’re completely in the Romney/Ryan camp and would never hold them to the same standards that you hold the president to.
To call 8 a lie is interesting. Since you know Obama can’t end the tax cuts by himself, I suppose you’re referring to the negotiations over tax and other questions in late 2010 — but since nothing negotiated there had any effect prior to 2011, that still leaves you with the fact that all the deficit damage caused by the Bush cuts in 2009 and 2010’s are properly attributable to Bush, not Obama.
But in late 2010, the Democrats actually passed a bill with 53 votes ending the Bush tax cuts for those with incomes over $250,000, and then for those with incomes over a million dollars. In both cases, Senate Republicans filibustered, and they (fairly credibly, I thought) threatened to filibuster all legislation except basic funding until they got what they wanted, which was the full extension of the Bush tax cuts.
In the end, the Republicans got their tax cut extension, in exchange for the Democrats getting unemployment insurance extensions and some other stuff. I think to look at all that and say that Obama, not the GOP, owns the Bush tax cuts is a major case of partisan “anything bad must be Obama’s fault” syndrome.
I’m not sure why you say Afghanistan. Obviously, Obama chose to expand our commitment in Afghanistan and deserves the blame for that. However, the Iraq War cost a lot more than Afghanistan, and I don’t see any way that you can blame invading Iraq on Obama.
5. Obama’s debt plan did nothing, because it never became law. Had it passed, there’s no credible reason to think it wouldn’t have reduced the debt compared to baseline – raising revenues and reducing spending is a pretty textbook way to do that.
I guess you could claim that it wasn’t credible because it wasn’t extreme. But I think gradual changes are more defensible policy than the sort of extreme budget changes Romney has proposed.
If you’re saying no plan is serious unless it has buy-in from the opposing party, then fair enough, but if that’s the standard you can’t accuse Romney or Ryan of having proposed a serious plan, either.
3. Are you claiming there’s a tax clause in the ACA that raises taxes on over a million small businesses, and that somehow not a single one of the journalists or health law experts who have read and studied the ACA have reported it? But Ryan knows about it, but has kept it secret, rather than releasing details about it, other than mentioning it in his convention speech?
That’s ridiculous. If the ACA levels “new taxes on nearly a million small businesses,” why would everyone be keeping it secret? If Ryan’s the only one who knows the secret, why not send out a press release?
My bet is that he’s taking some other tax (like the increase of under a percentage point in Medicare payroll taxes for those earning over $250000) and talking about it as if it were a small business tax. But until he clarifies what the heck he was talking about, we won’t know.
I hate convention speeches – left or right, they consist of nothing more than preaching to converts. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get drawn in to the nonsense this time, and yet here I am, arguing about a Ryan speech that none of us will be able to remember a year from now.
Sometimes I think all candidates should have to write all their campaigning in the form of blog posts where they’ll be questioned aggressively in comments by policy experts. Couldn’t be worse than our current system.
Here is what Ryan said in his speech about the GM closing:
“President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.
A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.
Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.”
You tell me the lie in that account. Where does he say or imply that Obama was President when the plant was closed? Everything he said was true, and it was not phrased in a deceptive or deceitful manner. Obama arrived, preached optimism, and the plant closed, and lots opf plants have closed. Where’s the lie? Where’s the deceit?
That’s what I mean by quibbling, and Barry. if President Obama said that and Republican said he was lying, I would absolutely call them on it, just as I called them on the claim that the President was implying that entrepreneurs didn’t build their own businesses—and he was a whole lot less clear and articulate than Ryan. There are no misplaced modifiers in Ryan’s speech—with “that” modifying the nouns before the nearest one, and being singular to modify a plural.
Before I go further, do you concede that this, #1 on your list, is a load of hooey? Because Ryan merely said that it was closed in less than a year, and neither said nor implied that Obama closed it. Calling your point quibbling was generous.
Because Ryan merely said that it was closed in less than a year, and neither said nor implied that Obama closed it.
Reread the passage you cited. That sure seems to me like Ryan is trying to tie Obama to that plant being shuttered…and that plant being shuttered as representative of what Obama has caused.
The deceit is plain. If Ryan isn’t trying to tie Obama to the closing of that plant, then he’d actually be saying that the republican administration screwed up the economy even worse than we knew while Obama was campaigning, so Obama should be given slack for not fixing everything. I’m pretty sure the latter was not intended.
Jack,
You ask “where’s the lie, where’s the deceit?”
It’s precisely at the point where he ignored Obama’s word “if.” Obama said the plant would stand IF IF IF IF IF the government supported it. That’s what he said.
And the government didn’t. And the plant closed.
If anything, Obama’s statement was a warning, a warning that came true.
You ask, where’s the deceit? It’s in Ryan’s brazen insistence on ignoring the “IF,” skipping right over it to suggest that somehow Obama’s quote had anything to do with the outcome.
You say Ryan’s statement was true: it was nonsense. It was a complete non sequitur, phrased in attack terms. It is “true” only in the trivial logical sense that from a false premise, any conclusion follows.
You tell me: If, to use your words, Ryan “neither said nor implied that Obama closed it”– then what in the world do you think he was saying? What other possible meaning is there in what he said? What other interpretation, other than complete gibberish, is there?
How does one ignore “if” while saying it, Charles? That makes no sense at all. The story—I’m not arguing that it was strong way to make the case or even a case worth mentioning—was clear: this guy came to the plant and said “things can be better, vote for me” and things didn’t get better and haven’t gotten better. That’s what is the obvious meaning. Read again:
“President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, [ He spoke about change and told us he would make things better, and we voted for him in my state] especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory. [“About to lose”—not at risk of losing, but about to lose–soon to lose, going to lose. How does that possibly suggest that Obama could have been responsible, or an intent by Ryan to so suggest?]
A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if [ Hidden? How is that word hidden? How is it glossed over?] our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.
Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. [ Translation: It was just words.] It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.” [ Those towns are just as badly off as ours is, and supposedly Obama WAS there to support them…and what good has it done?]
That’s not gibberish or a non-sequitur. I think its unfair, perhaps, but there is no lie or misrepresentation in it except for those who are per-disposed to find them.
How does one ignore “if” while saying it, Charles? That makes no sense at all.
You’re right in one respect, Ryan’s statements there made no logical sense. They were non sequiturs. While Ryan said the “if”, his point only works without it… or if the plant closed under Obama.
The story—I’m not arguing that it was strong way to make the case or even a case worth mentioning—was clear: this guy came to the plant and said “things can be better, vote for me” and things didn’t get better and haven’t gotten better.
Except the base line for things getting better is after Obama took office, and the example is before Obama took office. It just doesn’t work without misrepresenting the situation.
That’s not gibberish or a non-sequitur. I think its unfair, perhaps, but there is no lie or misrepresentation in it except for those who are per-disposed to find them.
If Ryan is not misrepresenting what happened, how could this attack be unfair?
It’s usually unfair to use one instance of one speech in one hopeless situation as exemplifying or indicating anything at all. It’s bad speechwriting—you want an anecdote to lead to your general conclusion, but you pick one that doesn’t do that, can’t and shouldn’t.
Here is as good a place to point out that I defended the President against allegations that his “you didn’t build that” wasn’t a denigration of business owners with far less ammunition than Ryan’s speech provides. (Republicans argue that the lie came AFTER the speech, when Obama denied this was what he meant.) You, Charles and Barry argue that if all Ryan was saying is that Obama made a hopeful speech and couldn’t stop a closing that was going to happen no matter what he did, it wasn’t worth saying—well, the innocent message of Obama’s speech was idiotic: “the government builds the roads and bridges.” That’s it? That’s what he was really shouting about? I actually think that was it, though the subtext—all that stuff about being smart and working hard didn’t make you successful—is creepy. As Barry notes, the undecideds are idiots, and both parties talk to them accordingly.
I’m giving Ryan the same benefit of the doubt that I gave the President, but I’ll tell you what: if you want to agree that Obama said what the Republicans say he did, I’ll agree that Ryan was intentionally saying what you say he was here. It’s a good deal for you, in the sense that the argument that Obama was denigrating entrepreneurs is easier to make based on his actual words and sentence structure—and the fact that we all know he’s brilliant and a word magician
I think its a bad deal for Obama, frankly.
Jack,
First, you didn’t give Obama the benefit of the doubt. You claimed he really intented to say that businessmen didn’t build their businesses:
They argued that when the President said, “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” he “clearly” intended “that” to refer to the roads and bridges. Here I side with Taranto: Obama can be rhetorically awkward, but not that awkward. “That” refers to “business.”
Second, pointing out that the infrastructure and country are necessary for businesses to thrive was not an idiotic message. It shouldn’t have to be pointed out, but the government-only-harms-business” rhetoric pretended that businesses were not reliant on infrastructure. As such, it was a necessary and true counterpoint.
Third, you’re using the everyone-does-it rationalization here. Bad Jack.
Fourth, you are comparing two incomparable situations. Both the republicans and the democrats heard Ryan imply that Obama was responsible for closing the plant. It was clear to both sides that this was intended, as the counter would not be beneficial. For Obama’s speech, there was immediate disagreement on what was intended, and the position taken by the democrats (and anyone who understands basic speech patterns, inflection, and that ad libbed words occasionally have dangling antecedent) would be beneficial to Obama and a stronger argument than if the “THAT” is taken with it’s grammatically correct antecedent.
To make Ryan’s speech true, it would have to be pointless. Correcting Obama’s grammatical gaffe makes his point stronger. Obama’s was a word use mistake; Ryan’s was an intentional misrepresentation. The situations are not at all the same.
1. I don’t see how you read it that way. I wrote:
“Obama is making the argument that individual achievement cannot be partitioned from community collaboration. No one truly goes it alone, no matter how significant their achievement or how unique their talents. Every successful individual and business indebted to the community, the nation and the American system. It’s not a remarkable concept, and shouldn’t be a controversial one. If it was articulately and unambiguously described, the only reasonable answer would be, “Well, of course.”
2. That’s what I wrote, the crux of the piece. In agreeing with Taranto, I agreed only that “that” referred to the business. I also clearly say, based on the whole post, that “You didn’t build that” doesn’t mean “You didn’t build your own business,” but rather “you didn’t build your own business without help from the society and the government.”
And it IS an obvious point, just as the fact that Obama is all talk and little productive action is an obvious point.
3. My argument is that I am applying the same standard that you thought was fair with Obama to Ryan, and Obama is a tougher case. That’s not “everybody does it.” That’s “I” do it. Bad tgt.
4. Both Republicans and Democrats were guided by confirmation bias. That doesn’t change what Ryan said. Like Obama, Ryan may well have botched his delivery, butyou and Barry are claiming a fiendish rhetorical plot to include the fair “if” but really hide it, to accurately state the facts but cause the lazy eared to hear something else. Absurd, unlikely, and unfair to Ryan.
Jack,
1/2) I stand by my statement. As I noted, you didn’t give Obama the benefit of the doubt. You specifically did not give him the benefit of the doubt, but still understood the overall point of the speech. It was clear.
And it IS an obvious point, just as the fact that Obama is all talk and little productive action is an obvious point.
Ad hominem attack. Also, as I said, just because something is obvious doesn’t mean it’s worthless. The attacks from the otherside were contradicted by this obvious point. In that context, it made sense to bring it up.
3) No, you are not applying the same standard, and yes, you did say that if it’s okay for Obama, then it’s okay for Ryan. It was an everybody does it comment.
4) Both Republicans and Democrats were guided by confirmation bias. That doesn’t change what Ryan said.
This is missing antecedents, so I’m having difficulty parsing what you’re saying here. Are you talking about the response of Democrats and Republicans to Ryan’s speech? The one where everybody had the same reaction that Ryan claimed Obama failed in his duty to keep the plant open? … Where the only difference was that Republicans and low information voters believed it at the start and Democrats (and journalists) pointed out it was intentionally misleading from the getgo? I think you’re making my point for me.
Like Obama, Ryan may well have botched his delivery, butyou and Barry are claiming a fiendish rhetorical plot to include the fair “if” but really hide it, to accurately state the facts but cause the lazy eared to hear something else. Absurd, unlikely, and unfair to Ryan.
In what possible delivery is Ryan’s statement a plus for his party AND not misleading? This wasn’t a botch. This was intentional.
Beyond that, this isn’t an uncommon means of invalid argument. Actually, it’s textbook. The valid argument only works if Obama is responsible for closing the plant. This premise isn’t stated… it’s just assumed that people will fill in that connection on their own. And it’s not just the “lazy eared” that this occurs to. It occurs to pretty much everyone. Unless you’re specifically looking for errors in an argument, most people don’t see them, and even when trying to find them, the lion’s share of people tend to have problems doing so.
My first critical thinking logic course was the simplest class I’ve ever had. Every quiz and test was looking at arguments and finding the formal and informal fallacies we had just studied. It was considered one of the more difficult 100 level philosophy classes. An 85% was an A, but B’s and C’s were common…. for philosophy students.
The general population of low information undecideds generally aren’t going to look for or find the errors. The base isn’t generally going to look for errors either. Even if they did, they have to get through their biases before having a chance, and ideological biases are hard to push through. Look at religion. Look at your previous post about ISMs.
Your argument is boiling down to: It’s easier to think Ryan messed up his argument than to think he was intending to mislead, but you don’t have a coherent position Ryan could have been going for that doesn’t involve misleading and the statements made by Ryan were powerful rhetorically and likely to be believed.
“I think that by “quibbling,” you mean to say that you’re completely in the Romney/Ryan camp and would never hold them to the same standards that you hold the president to.” Would it not then follow that by belaboring the point that you mean to say you’re completely in the Obama camp and would never hold them to the same standards that you hold Ryan to? Nitpicking every word looking for a “lie” is really a waste of time and counterproductive. And if you think Ryan’s speech was full of holes, I can’t wait till y’all disect Harry Reid’s.
Would it not then follow that by belaboring the point that you mean to say you’re completely in the Obama camp and would never hold them to the same standards that you hold Ryan to?
Not in the least. Pushing back against objective lies is nonpartisan. It’s something Jack normally does. Honestly, I think if this was anyone but a supposed “budget hawk”, Jack would have ripped this speech to shreds. Pointing out a double standard is not the same as having a double standard.
Nitpicking every word looking for a “lie” is really a waste of time and counterproductive.
First, this isn’t nitpicking. It was a prewritten speech by a supposed wonk, and calling out lies is never nitpicking. Second, This argument is straight out of Livvy’s playlist. It’s counterproductive to criticize people when they do bad.
As I said, I hate conventions, and I especially hate the Democratic convention. (At least when I watch a GOP speech, I can console myself with the knowledge that I’m not voting for these people.)
I don’t think expecting politicians at high-profile, carefully-scripted speeches to adhere to a high level of truthfulness – what you call nit-picking – is wrong.
I watched a bit of Michelle Obama’s speech, and thought that she radically bent the truth when she referred to new job creation as “good” jobs. The jobs that have been created during Obama’s administration have been overwhelmingly low-wage jobs, not what people usually think of us “good” jobs. That’s all I’ve seen of the Dem’s convention.
However, the liberal blog I linked to before has been fact-checking the Democratic speakers, and calling them out not only on flat-out lies but also on just being misleading: See here, here, and here. I think your assumption that anyone who’d fact-check Ryan is naturally prepared to give the Democrats a pass is simply untrue.
We’ll see. Or maybe I won’t see. I’m listening to Bill Clinton and my eyeballs are exploding.
That’s your own fault.
You’re right. I turned everything off. Catching up on new posts, am sending your name to the Vatican – nominating you for canonization. You either are a saint or a martyr for moderating this column.
Participation on one side of an argument is not moderation of a thread, though contacting the Vatican seems appropriate. They’re all about using invalid logic to hold to there beliefs in the face of counterevidence.
Where you worry about ethics, I worry about sociopathy. Reflexive lying is one of the signature traits of sociopaths. (There’s even some evidence of a neurological mechanism.) A single mistake doesn’t mean anything. It could be a meaningless memory glitch. But if there’s a pattern…
Au contraire–sociopathy is exactly what I worry about, because DC is full of sociopaths.
Much ado about nothing, I think, and it’s probably going to be turned into a Scooter Libby moment if MoveOn and the Democrats have their way. This man has more information in his brain than five people put together but he’s as human as the man who went to 57 states. And he’s talking about marathon races for god’s sake, not rape or purple heart medals. BTW: the plant closing and the Medicare thing are still open for argument depending on how you interpret the information or where you got it from.
I believe the question Jack is raising is, is this an indication of Ryan’s willingness or propensity to mislead about other, more substantive things. If not deliberately lying, he is misleading on the Medicare claim, the stimulus claim, the plant closing and Obama’s reaction to the deficit commission. He is even being criticized on the Fox News web site:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/
No one cares if Paul Ryan ran a marathon in three hours or three days, but they should care if they can trust what he says.
The article you quote was written by Sally Kohn, the self-described “Chief Agitation Officer” of the Movement Vision Lab, her “progressive” think tank. She is a community organizer and an Obama supporter. Her piece was on the Fox Opinion page as a rebuttal to the Ryan speech. As for your assertion that he’s lying on the medicare claim, etc., please read the editorial from Investor’s Business Daily. It explains things better than I can: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/083012-624188-so-called-fact-checks-disguise-media-liberal-agenda.htm
OldGrayMary,
Using an IBD editorial to “rebut” Sally Kohn is like quoting New Gingrich to rebut Teddy Kennedy; it just substitutes one opinionator for another.
More substantive in my view is Ryan’s treatment of the GM plant closing. He has not backed away one iota from the logic of his claim, repeating it multiple times, including back to back statements to Brian Williams on NBC. It goes as follows:
1. Obama said:
2. Premise: if the government supported the plant,
3. Conclusion: it would stay open 100 years.
4. Fact: It closed
Let’s just parse that.
Ryan emphasizes points 1, 3 and 4, and pretty much skips over 2. The clear implication he intends is:
1. Obama said
3. It would stay open 100 years
4. It closed.
When people protest that the plant closed under Bush’s watch, before Obama even got into office, Ryan basically says, “I’m just saying.”
Can anyone possibly construe another meaning out of what Ryan is stating here? Is he arguing that Obama is a bad predictor of government policy? That he couldn’t read the Bush administration’s mind?
Of course not. Ryan clearly wants us to skip over, ignore, forget the premise of Obama’s argument:
Premise: IF the government supports it,
Conclusion: THEN the plant will stand for 100 years.
And anyone with far fewer brains than Ryan allegedly has would know that from a faulty premise, any conclusion follows. The government DIDN’T support the plant (remember this was before the auto bailout) and, no surprise, logical or otherwise, the plant closed.
This is not a signature significance moment, to use Jack’s construct. This is a conscious attempt to obscure the truth and make us look past a perfectly logical statement. It was repeated time after time, even asserted baldly after direct confrontation.
It is the equivalent of this:
Parent: “If you study hard, you’ll get good grades and graduate.”
Student then fails.
Student: “You said I’d graduate, dammit, and now I’ve flunked out.”
Someone tell me why this isn’t flat-out bald-faced arrogant lying by Ryan, please? Because it sure looks like it to me.
Thanks, Charles. I will add that, with regard to the Medicare cuts: the ACA puts the money it saves through reducing payment to providers back into Medicare to slow the growth of spending, and make it more solvent. Almost sounds Republican. There are no cuts to beneficiaries. And Ryan (and the article you cited) conveniently leave out the fact that Ryan’s budget also cuts 716 billion from Medicare. Deliberately misleading in both instances.
What jan said.
Count me as someone who dislikes and distrusts Ryan, and who couldn’t care less about this incident.
At the very worst, I think a petty, self-aggrandizing lie like this — if that’s what it was, rather than just misspeaking — suggests someone who is a bit arrogant, full of himself, and needy of attention. That is to say, it describes almost everyone who ever has or ever will made a credible run for President.
But maybe it was just a meaningless slip of the tongue. The four lead candidates, during campaigns, are speaking in public every day, and often speaking in public several different times in a day. They are interviewed constantly, if they allow interviews. Every word they say is subject to being analyzed under a microscope. And all of this is taking place under almost unimaginable pressure and too little sleep.
What’s the chance of speaking in public fifty or a hundred times in a month and never, ever misspeaking? What’s the chance of speaking a hundred times and never, ever saying a phrase that comes out wrong, or saying “definitely” when your brain intended “definitely not,” or saying “two fifty” when you know perfectly well that “three fifty” is the correct answer?
I think the way campaigns and the media runs makes so-called “gaffes” and misstatements inevitable, and magnifies them above their (nonexistent) importance. Stories like this aren’t an indictment of the candidates, who are merely being human; it’s an indictment of the media, which loves reporting on gaffes and is bored by policy, and of the public, which rewards stupid media reporting with their attention.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hold candidates responsible for what they say. But what we should be looking at is the statement that the candidate has repeated a hundred times, speech after speech, always pretty much the same way. If a candidate tells the same lie over and over, that’s not a misstatement, that’s a lie. We should be looking at the carefully-crafted speeches that reflect careful thought and editing.
We should be looking, in other words, for the times when the candidate clearly said what he or she meant, rather than attacking them for what they didn’t mean to say.
Frankly, what they mean to say is often bad enough.
I used to be a runner before my knee and asthma got bad. I can still quote you that I once ran a wind-aided 11.1 100m dash, An extremely questionably hand-timed 11.0 100m dash, and a few real 11.2s. My open 400m never dropped below 53.4, but I hit 50.3 as the first leg of a 4×400, and it wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I broke 58. I haven’t run a timed race in 13 years.
When a runner quotes a time, it is what he or she meant. That Ryan took the “holy smokes” and noted that he was fast when he was younger seals the deal that he did mean under 3 hours. He knew what he said.
The larger point makes sense, but for a runner, and with what was actually said, calling this a misstatement is pushing the bounds of credulity.
As a sometimes competitive runner (no marathons), the “under three hours” would stand out for me: that’s an exceptional athlete. But, also, I would be aware of the glory and bane of a runner’s competitive existence, the posting of times. Once you run in an organized race, your time is out there on the internet for the world to see, forever. People who run marathons in under 3 hours attract a lot of notice, so I don’t think that Ryan intentionally misspoke. Ryan either believed (incorrectly) that he had run that quickly or misheard the question (it was a half-marathon that he was thinking of).
In looking over the transcript, it appears that the interviewer was trying to ingratiate himself and press Ryan for a response. Could the candidate have been telling him what he thought he wanted to hear – like a star-fan interaction – and lapsed under time pressure or overload? Perhaps.
According to psychologists, memory is malleable; that’s the reason why eyewitness testimony is highly questionable. (Jack, I just heard that the State of NJ now requires judicial instructions to the jury to this effect on cases that hinge on it.) Maybe, over the years he’s come to believe that this was his best time, and the questioning just reinforces it. This reminds me of the famous “Hillary Clinton being named after Sir Edmund Hillary” brouhaha, where fact and fiction mixed to produce a quotable memory! When it comes to ourselves, and it does for all of us, we should attempt to track down the cause of the error, and try to correct it. Mr. Ryan should do likewise and as a public figure should set the record straight!
So, Ryan lied because it was what his audience wanted to hear? That’s not better for him.
If that occurred, I would agree. But even so I don’t think that scenario is so remarkable. Maybe (like I added below) he just remembers it differently?
I’m assuming this was in response to my comment about Ryan lying to please his audience in response to John’s comment.
Anyway, is it remarkable in the “is it uncommon” way? No. Is it remarkable that a presidential running mate with a dozen years as a high profile congressman i doesn’t understand how to give an interview, and is tripped up by wanting to please his interviewer? Then yes, yes that would be important to know. Ryan either comes off as incompetent or as a liar.
The important thing about what Ryan says is what people who are listening to him take away from it. Forget the marathon–I don’t care. I think John Glass has an excellent point. Ryan knew what all those delegates in Tampa wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that Obama promised to keep the plant open: another broken promise. They wanted to hear that Obama was responsible for the failure of the debt commission: another example of intransigence. They wanted to hear that it’s Obama who is going to cut Medicare: another reason to hate the ACA. None of these things are true, and he knew it. He left out just enough facts, while leaving in just enough truth. He fed the red meat to the crowd and they loved it. A wonderful politician, but not someone I want to be Vice President.
Deleting “None of these things are true,” in my post above, I would like to correct it by continuing:
All of these things are “true,” but what the crowd takes away is a lie. He left out just enough facts, while leaving in just enough truth. He fed the red meat to the crowd and they loved it.
And if you repeat a lie often enough . . . .