Equivocation

Anyone who has ever been a teacher or a parent knows all about equivocation.  Kids wouldn't be kids without their well-honed ability to fudge a little with the truth.  And parents wouldn't be parents if their blind love for their children did not make them easy prey to such a rhetorical device.  Teachers are in the same position.

That's what makes this campaign season, the entire political process actually, so frustrating.  Politicians are getting better and better at dealing from the bottom of the truthiness deck.  Checking PolitiFact every day used to be one of my favorite things.  It was reassuring to see a Pants on Fire assigned to a particularly egregious lie, or a big True next to some startling piece of information supporting my position.  But lately everything gets rated Partly False or Partly True or Half True or Half False.  It's like dealing with clever and unscrupulous seniors on a day when an assignment is due.

There are still a few Pants on Fire moments (saying that Obama started his presidency with an apology tour, or suggesting that Romney is somehow responsible for some lady's death by cancer in Ohio), but the candidates are clever enough to avoid them.  The thing is no one (now that Michelle Bachman and Newt Gingrich are out of the race) tells bald faced lies.  They just hedge a little.

Romney let his reliance on the blogosphere for his policy positions get the best of him and he pounced on the President for saying that he proclaimed the tragedy in Libya an act of terror the very next day.  The moderator pointed out (God bless her) that in fact Obama did say precisely that.  This is an important speaking point for Republicans because they are hoping to use the sadness in Libya to suggest that the killing of bin Laden was no big deal and Obama should not get any points for that rather ballsy decision.  So what did they do in reaction to the Great Libya Gaffe?"  They decried the moderator for being partisan.  Evidently, pointing out the truth is a Democratic Party thing.  But this tempest in a teapot is all about equivocation.  Obama did use the word terror the very next day, but if you were into parsing sentences it was unclear if he was referring to Libya specifically.  Four weeks later, after more information became available, Obama was more specific about the whole terror/Libya connection.  You see, they were both right.  Kinda.

Time and time again, every criticism Romney makes of Obama's record, the facts are cherry picked.  Time and time again, every criticism leveled against Romney uses equally cherry picked facts.  If our two candidates, two political parties, two sides of the philosophical schism separating our country can't even agree on the facts, how can they agree on anything?  It is a depressing situation.

I suppose it was ever thus.  I've stood on the spot on the Potomac River where George Washington claims to have thrown a silver dollar across.  Fat chance!  I'll bet he was equivocating just to earn some political points, kind of like Paul Ryan forcing homeless people to stand around and watch him wash clean dishes.  The thing that really happened is that George put a silver dollar in his pocket and had one of his slaves row him to the other side.  When the boat landed, George got out and stood across the river from where he started.  He then tossed the coin to the slave as a kind of tip and in fact ended up throwing a silver dollar across the river.  Of course, this is just a theory.

"Son, did you chop down that cherry tree?  Tell the truth now."

Young George, looking at a stump and next to it a leafy log with no cherries on it, cherries being out of season at the time, said, "well, since there is no tree and there are no cherries, I would have to say that, no I did not chop down a cherry tree."

"Son!  I saw you with the axe.  Aren't those leaves in your hair?"

"Those aren't leaves in my hair.  That's dirt on my shoe.  Are you sure it was me?  What time was it?

"George, I'm getting fed up with your stories.  Next thing you know you're going to tell me about throwing a silver dollar across the river.  I want you to tell the truth, or I'm going to give this property to your half brother."

"I cannot tell a lie.  It was I who chopped down the cherry tree."

No wonder he was such a great president.