Fact Check: The myths of Campaign '08

updated 2:25 p.m. ET Nov. 3, 2008

WASHINGTON - Facts have taken a beating in Campaign '08.

Each in his own way, John McCain and Barack Obama have produced enduring myths, amplified by their running mates and supporters. When a non-licensed plumber who owes back taxes and would get a tax cut under Obama is held out by McCain as a stand-in for average working Americans who should vote Republican, you know truth-telling is taking a back seat to myth-making.

McCain has clung tenaciously to many of his distortions throughout the campaign, yielding on a few.

Obama has taken a different tack when he is called on his misstatements. Although perhaps too late to really set the record straight, he's edged closer to the facts.

You might need a microscope to tell the difference, but slight variations in a pitch or accusation can make all the difference between bogus and real.

Obama saddled McCain with a bum rap when he accused the Republican of wanting a 100-year war in Iraq back in the spring. Finally he relented and said McCain sees U.S. troops being in Iraq for 100 years. That's closer to right — as a peacekeeping force like the one in South Korea. But McCain might be long associated with war without end.

Obama accused McCain of wanting to privatize Social Security, which he doesn't. Now he accuses McCain of wanting to privatize "part" of Social Security, which he does, as one option that younger workers could choose.

For his part, McCain has blithely carried on with a variety of discredited claims, abetted by a running mate whose exuberance is not at all dimmed by contrary evidence.

Sarah Palin repeated her boast that she declared "thanks but no thanks for that bridge to nowhere" long after it became clear she had said no such thing — neither in words nor in essence.

McCain's down-to-the-wire accusation that Obama "will raise your taxes" contradicts Obama's tax-cut proposals for all but wealthy Americans. His dark warnings that Obama will fine small businesses that do not provide health insurance goes against a plan by the Democrat that exempts small businesses from paying for coverage. In fact, Obama would give them money to help them offer insurance.

Beyond the realm of exaggeration and misrepresentation, omission plays a large part, too, in denying voters important information on what the next president will do.

Neither candidate has owned up to the budget crunch that is certain to crimp their promises, send the country far deeper into debt, or both. Obama's assertion that his cost savings more than pay for his programs, and McCain's statement that he'll freeze most government spending and balance the budget in four years, are not believed outside their campaigns and circles of allies.

Some of the myths:

Oil slickness
"We have to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much," McCain says, again and again.

That's a seriously inflated figure cited by McCain for the value of U.S. oil imports from countries hostile to America. In fact, the government says the U.S. spent less than half that sum on crude oil and refined petroleum projects from foreign sources last year, and most were from friendly countries such as Canada, Mexico and Britain.

Obama upped the stakes when he used the figure, boiling the vast web of oil and debt transactions down to two countries: "Nothing is more important than us no longer borrowing $700 billion or more from China and sending it to Saudi Arabia," he said. "It's mortgaging our children's future."

Health care horrors
It only takes McCain and Palin a few words to bend Obama's health care plan out of recognition.

McCain tells supporters he "won't fine small businesses and families with children, as Senator Obama proposes, to force them into a new, huge, government-run health care program, while I keep the cost of the fine a secret until I hit you with it."

Palin talks about Obama's "universal government-run program" and adds: "I don't think it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider health care being taken over by the Feds."

Obama's plan doesn't fine small businesses. It doesn't force families with children, or anyone, into government-run health care. And the Feds wouldn't be taking over the system.

Between them, McCain and Palin got one part of it half right: Obama has not said how much he would fine larger companies if they do not meet his requirement to offer health insurance or pay into a kitty.

McCain's health plan is distorted, in turn, by Obama.

"Your health care benefits will get taxed for the first time in history," Obama warns voters in attacking it. He often leads voters to think that's the full story. Hardly.

McCain, in exchange for proposing to tax the value of health benefits provided by employers, would offer a tax credit to help people buy insurance. That tax benefit — $5,000 for a family — gives people much more than the new taxation takes away.

Over time, the tax credit could lose value as premiums rise faster.

But that's not an argument the Democratic ticket has chosen to make, in speeches, debates and relentless advertising. Running mate Joe Biden mischaracterized the new taxation as the largest middle-class tax increase in history, ignoring the credits in a rhetorical exercise that would flunk Accounting 101.

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