President Bill Clinton‘s 50-minute speech was chock-full of facts and stats, and was a “fact-checker’s nightmare,” according to the folks at Annenberg’s FactCheck.org. A “nightmare” because “lots of effort required to run down his many statistics and factual claims,” and a “nightmare” because, as FactCheck.org wrote, “it produc[ed] little for us to write about.”
“Republicans will find plenty of Clinton’s scorching opinions objectionable. But with few exceptions, we found his stats checked out,” they concluded.
Indeed, when Paul Ryan delivered his speech, practically every mainstream media outlet said it was full of lies.
And, amusingly, one of the Republican’s favorite Obama-haters, Dick Morris — who supposedly always has the “inside scoop,” like with those secret polls that supposedly show a Romney landslide — actually criticized Clinton’s speech for being “too statistical, too long, too complex.” Apparently, Republicans think Americans don’t understand math.
Clinton’s speech wasn’t 100% perfect, there were a few minor quibbles the FacrCheck folks had. Read their report to see the worst:
“The worst we could fault him for was a suggestion that President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was responsible for bringing down the rate of increase in health care spending, when the fact is that the law’s main provisions have yet to take effect.”
And, that claim that more private scetor jobs are created under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents? True, says Bloomberg — see chart above.
Clinton: “Well, since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private sector jobs. So, what’s the job score? Republicans, 24 million, Democrats, 42 (million). Now, there’s a reason for this.It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because poverty, discrimination, and ignorance restrict growth. When you stifle human potential, when you don’t invest in new ideas, it doesn’t just cut off the people who are affected, it hurts us all.”
If you have to lie to win, you’re a loser.