Facts Are Stubborn Things

By Shane Hopkins

The game of politics centers around "campaigning." This is just how it is. It's how it's always been. Some take issue with the process of touting your pluses and minimizing your minuses, but it's within the expected rules of the game. However, occasionally someone says something untrue. This can be anything from a genuine mistake to a boldfaced lie, but I suspect that it's usually less diabolical than people tend to play it.

Let me give you a list of some of the issues where Romney has gotten a lot of bad press. Most recently there was a tiff with an AP reporter in which Romney is said to have lied about having lobbyists in his campaign. There is the time Romney said he saw his father march with Martin Luther King Jr. There is the time Romney bragged about the NRA endorsing him (and don't forget his self-characterization as a "lifelong hunter"!). All of these have something in common: Romney was right to bring up his record, a record that supports his candidacy and his positions, but lost the chance to receive his due credit on the issues as the chattering focused more and more on a literal dissection of what he said rather than the substance of why he was saying it.

I could go down a laundry list of the times Romney's been blasted for misspeaking (often being labeled a liar rather than merely having made a mistake), but bickering about the actual words he used and their literal versus figurative definitions, the proper versus common use of words like endorse, and the like, will never arrive at the truth.

The truth is much simpler.

No matter how many lobbyists rub shoulders with Romney, his campaign is simply not dependent on them for cash or expertise in the way the other campaigns are (although both are accepted). Romney's family has long supported the civil rights movement. Romney had demonstrable approval from the NRA (whether officially or not) during his Massachusetts campaign and supports the importance of protecting the second amendment.

Is he guilty of exaggeration? Is he guilty of misstatements? Is he guilty of carelessness? Perhaps yes. But is he guilty of lying? Of outright deception? Of claiming to hold one position when he effectively holds another? No, despite that the media would much rather malign a candidate for his errors than honestly acknowledge that his record and positions have consistently supported the message he was trying to deliver.

This is not spin. This is not apologetics. This is just an assessment of the actual positions Romney holds, and his fallibility as a candidate who makes honest mistakes. The mistakes are honest because they have never changed his message one hundred and eighty degrees.

There is one more layer to this communication thing that demands mention. Romney has been criticized over the last few days by McCain for supposedly supporting a timetable of withdrawal from Iraq. McCain has also attacked him for supposedly supporting amnesty before he opposed it, as well as a big Michigan "bailout". Romney's positions on these issues differ from McCain's not just in substance but in style.

Romney's message is always sophisticated and nuanced, as our Commander in Chief's understanding must be. McCain's message plays to the media with dogmatic oversimplification. It fits him well, because that's how he thinks. So, when Romney has had the courage to make careful distinctions, he has sometimes been attacked for "reversals" or for spinning things.

Again, Romney's message has consistently been for responsible action by the U.S. in Iraq and in regard to illegal immigration, and no out-of-context testimonial by McCain can change that. The economic stimulus in Michigan is not a "bailout", but rather shows McCain's inability to understand the concept of research investment. Romney hardly needs a testimonial to his investment understanding.

At the end of the character assassination and name calling, Romney's key rebuttal to Huckabee's charges of dishonesty in a recent debate ring true: "Facts are stubborn things."

The truth is that in every case Romney has been accused of lying, the message he was intending to convey was based on the bedrock of record and fact.