[FactCheck] FactChecking First Debate

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_1.html

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Summary

McCain and Obama contradicted each other repeatedly during their first debate, and each volunteered some factual misstatements as well. Here’s how we sort them out:

• Obama said McCain adviser Henry Kissinger backs talks with Iran “without preconditions,” but McCain disputed that. In fact, Kissinger did recently call for “high level” talks with Iran starting at the secretary of state level and said, “I do not believe that we can make conditions.” After the debate the McCain campaign issued a statement quoting Kissinger as saying he didn’t favor presidential talks with Iran.
  
• Obama denied voting for a bill that called for increased taxes on “people” making as little as $42,000 a year, as McCain accused him of doing. McCain was right, though only for single taxpayers. A married couple would have had to make $83,000 to be affected by the vote, and anyway no such increase is in Obama’s tax plan.
  
• McCain and Obama contradicted each other on what Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said about troop withdrawals. Mullen said a time line for withdrawal could be “very dangerous” but was not talking specifically about “Obama’s plan,” as McCain maintained.
  
• McCain tripped up on one of his signature issues – special appropriation “earmarks.” He said they had “tripled in the last five years,” when in fact they have decreased sharply.
  
• Obama claimed Iraq “has” a $79 billion surplus. It once was projected to be as high as that. It’s now down to less than $60 billion.
  
• McCain repeated his overstated claim that the U.S. pays $700 billion a year for oil to hostile nations. Imports are running at about $536 billion this year, and a third of it comes from Canada, Mexico and the U.K.
  
• Obama said 95 percent of “the American people” would see a tax cut under his proposal. The actual figure is 81 percent of households.
  
• Obama mischaracterized an aspect of McCain’s health care plan, saying “employers” would be taxed on the value of health benefits provided to workers. Employers wouldn’t, but the workers would. McCain also would grant workers up to a $5,000 tax credit per family to cover health insurance.
  
• McCain misrepresented Obama's plan by claiming he'd be "handing the health care system over to the federal government." Obama would expand some government programs but would allow people to keep their current plans or chose from private ones, as well.
  
• McCain claimed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had drafted a letter of resignation from the Army to be sent in case the 1944 D-Day landing at Normandy turned out to be a failure. Ike prepared a letter taking responsibility, but he didn’t mention resigning.

For full details, as well as other dubious claims and statements, please read our full Analysis section.

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A lot of it was exaggeration or omission of facts (and both sides were guilty of it), but there were some other stuff that stuck out for me:

• Did Kissinger support Obama? After the debate, Kissinger clarified his position and said he would not recommend that the President engage in direct talks with Iran. That's fine, but despite McCain's characterization, Obama also never recommended that tactic. He simply said he would leave that option open. And that, in fact, is not incompatible with what Kissinger had said earlier: "I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level .... I do not believe we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations." McCain tried to make a big deal out of this, and Obama was absolutely right in invoking Kissinger's views on the matter.
• Earmarks tripled? According to Citizens Against Government Waste, earmark spending decreased by 24%. That's a huge discrepency, so where exactly did McCain come up with that claim?
• Health care Bungling Obama said employer has to pay taxes on the health care you get from him -- in actuality, the employee has to pay those taxes. Maybe he just misspoke (Obama used "your employer" twice in that particular sentence ... did he just bungle a previously rehearsed line?). I think McCain's mischaracterization of Obama's plan is more serious, saying that Obama's plan would basically hand over health care to the federal government. If under Obama's plan people have the option to retain their private plans, how does it make sense to say that their health care is being handed over to the government?
• Removing combat troops in 16 months Fact check claims that Obama contradicted himself in the debate where he said he'd merely "reduce" the combat troops in 16 months. It's true, a year earlier he said that he'd "get all of our combat troop out of Iraq within 16 months". But the next sentence reads: "The only troops I will keep in Iraq will perform the limited missions of protecting our diplomats and carrying our targeted strikes on al Qaeda." Saying you'll remove all troops with certain exceptions is equivalent to saying you'll reduce troops. I don't see any contradiction there.
• Obama against calling Republican Guard Terrorist? McCain insinuated that Obama was against referring to Iran's Republican Guard as a sponsor of terror. Flat out untrue, given his record. Just because you oppose an amendment on certain grounds, that does not mean you oppose everything said in it. McCain, who's been in Washington for a long time, surely knows this.
• Naivete in regard to Georgia McCain claims that Obama's initial statement that "both sides ought to show restraint" was naive, and indicates that he doesn't understand Russia committed serious aggression against Georgia. In fact, the White House said the same thing: "We urge restraint on all sides -- that violence would be curtailed and that direct dialogue could ensue in order to help resolve their differences." That was actually the sensible and correct position to take.

Maybe I'm biased, but from this analysis it seemed to me that the most egregious falsifications were made by McCain.