Just the Facts, Please, Sen. Obama, Just the Facts

Checking the facts during a political campaign these days seems so, well, kind of old-fashioned, don’t you think? But Michael Dobbs at the Washington Post is still carrying on the tradition and awarding Pinocchios when he decides a candidate has not been telling the truth.

While scanning Wapo this morning, I noticed Dobbs was fact-checking Obama’s pledge to accept public financing. Dobbs awarded Obama three Pinocchios after observing:

“Barack Obama probably wishes that he had been more careful in the wording of some of his earlier statements about the public financing system. His carefully parsed retreat on public financing is similar to his hedging on an earlier promise to meet the leaders of Iran, Cuba, and North Korea "without preconditions" during his first year as president. In this case, however, the turnaround is even more blatant.”

I hadn’t checked in with Dobbs for awhile and noticed that in his previous entry, he had found Obama deserving one Pinocchio in the flag pin debate. This time Dobbs noted:

“Barack Obama is unconvincing when he claims that his decision on whether or not to wear the flag in his lapel comes down to the suit he is wearing on any particular day. Political campaigns spend untold hours obsessing over such image questions. A more plausible explanation for his embrace of the flag pin is that he wants to defuse the patriotism debate. John McCain, who spent five years in POW camps in Vietnam, feels no need to demonstrate his patriotism on his lapel.

“What a strange election campaign this is!”

Do you ever get the feeling that Barack Obama, in spite of the squeaky clean image projected by his campaign, is in reality a typical politician who can spin what he’s up to with the best of them?