Fact Check: The myths of Campaign '08

That darned bridge
When Palin ran for governor, she indicated her support for a proposal to build a nearly $400 million bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska, to an island with 50 residents and an airport. She was, at times, wishy-washy about it.

But that doesn't make for a compelling line against government waste on the stump.

So her stance became: "I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere." And a campaign ad declared she "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."

Actually, during her governor's campaign, she vowed to defend Southeast Alaska "when proposals are on the table like the bridge, and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative." At the time, the chief "spinmeister" against the project was McCain.

As governor, she abandoned the bridge after Washington pulled the money from it, letting the federal dollars be used for other projects in the state.

In September, her transportation department completed a $25 million gravel road to nowhere. Officials went ahead with the road, which would have led to the bridge, even though it has no purpose other than for foot races, hunting vehicles and possible future development.

Guilt by association
William Ayers, a University of Illinois education professor and former member of the radical Weather Underground, was front and center in Republican claims that Obama was "palling around with terrorists," as Palin put it. Ayers had a meet-the-candidate event in his home for Obama early in the Democrat's political career. The two served on the board of the Woods Fund. And they live in the same neighborhood.

McCain and Palin stretched the extent of that relationship to link Obama with shadowy figures.

Beyond that, they falsely implied that Ayers used the occasion of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to wish even greater harm.

"We don't care about an old washed-up terrorist and his wife, who still, at least on Sept. 11, 2001, said he still wanted to bomb more," McCain told a rally.

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This distortion originated in Hillary Rodham Clinton's playbook during the primaries, when she criticized Obama for the same relationship.

Ayers, Clinton said, made comments "which were deeply hurtful to people in New York and, I would hope, to every American, because they were published on 9/11, and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more."

By coincidence, The New York Times published a story on the day of the attacks about Ayers and what he called his fictionalized memoirs. The story was based on an interview he had done earlier, in Chicago, in which he declared, "I don't regret setting bombs," and "I feel we didn't do enough," even while seeming to dissociate himself coyly from the group's most destructive acts.

Late in the campaign, McCain and Palin criticized Obama for attending a 2003 party for Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American professor and critic of Israel. But McCain is also linked Khalidi. The professor was a founder of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, which received $448,000 from an organization McCain chairs.

Fuzzy numbers
A look at some of the figures often cited during this campaign:

• $4 billion: "John, you want to give oil companies another $4 billion" in tax breaks, Obama told McCain in a debate. In fact, McCain supports a cut in income taxes for all corporations, and doesn't single out any one industry for that benefit.
• $2,500: That's how much Obama says his health care plan will bring down costs for a family of four. Obama's plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four over time. Even if savings that large are achieved — economists are highly skeptical — not every dollar is bound to be passed on to consumers.

• 94: That's how many times McCain and Palin say that Obama has voted for tax increases or not to support a tax cut. This inflated count includes repetitive votes as well as votes to cut taxes for the middle class while raising them on the rich. An analysis by factcheck.org found that 23 of the votes were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all, seven were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, 11 would have increased taxes on only those making more than $1 million a year.
• $882 billion: "Senator McCain would pay for part of his plan by making drastic cuts in Medicare — $882 billion worth," Obama said. Obama ads claim McCain would cut benefits by 22 percent. McCain's plan proposes neither. He wants to save money the same way Obama wants to — by making programs such as Medicare more efficient. Obama's claim misrepresents what a McCain adviser said in a Wall Street Journal story and adds distorted analysis from a partisan think tank to come up with something that goes against what McCain says he would do — protect promised benefits from being cut.

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