Obama is Worse than Romney When It Comes to Taking Quotes Out of Context for Ads

Romney has a new ad out today in New Hampshire hammering Obama on the economy and outlining his plan for the government should he win the Oval Office. It’s a good ad, but there’s been some controversy over the use of one quote in it: Obama saying “if we keep talking about the economy we are going to lose.” It’s been correctly documented that Obama a) never said this in regards to the 2012 election, and b) he never actually said it himself, but was quoting a McCain adviser who said it back in 2008.

Apparently asked about this recently, the Obama White House said that it was  ”pleased to see numerous news organizations point out the blatant dishonesty in the ad” and that it was an “unfortunate” way for Romney to begin his time on the air this cycle.

Well, the Obama White House can save us the righteous indignation. They have done the same thing on an even worse scale.

Back in 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama was running against Senator John McCain, the Obama campaign ran an ad in Indiana begging the question, ”How can John McCain fix the economy, when he doesn’t think it’s broken?” However, the ad uses quotes that are drastically out of context and antiquated - much like Romney’s. First of all, watch it below:

 

 

Several things are wrong with this ad, and Politifact pointed them out back during the election. First of all, McCain is quoted as saying ”I don’t believe we’re headed into a recession.” This quote came from January, but the ad aired in August. As we all know, a lot changed between January and August 2008.

Further, the quote that “there’s been great progress economically” is taken out of McCain’s original context. It is abruptly cut off to an average man saying that the “economy is in a rut.” However, at the time of the clip, McCain was responding to a question asking if he believes Americans are better off than they were 7 years ago, with his full quote being:

There’s no doubt that we are in enormous difficulties. I think if you look at the overall record and millions of jobs have been created, et cetera, et cetera, you could make an argument that there’s been great progress economically over that period of time. But that’s no comfort. That’s no comfort to families now that are facing these tremendous economic challenges.

McCain goes on to the lament the country’s fiscal challenges of the day as well, the ecat opposite of what the Obama ad wants you to believe. That’s two out of context quotes in one ad. Compare that to Romney’s one and the ad doesn’t see so bad.

But it doesn’t stop there: the Obama campaign does it again in the same ad. McCain is quoted as saying “we have had a pretty good prosperous time, with low unemployment.” Once again, McCain is referring to the economy over George W. Bush’s entire tenure and the quote was taken from January 2008, once again before the financial crisis began and the economy crumbled.

That makes 3 distortions and out of context quotes in one 30 second ad from Obama back when he was supposed to change our political system for the better. So much for that.

Obviously, two wrongs do not make a right and Romney was wrong to take Obama’s soundbite out of context. But the Obama White House can spare us the charade that they are somehow above it all when they themselves have used the same tactic even more egregiously.

Image by art_es_anna via Flickr