Mitt Romneys misleading attack ad
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If you listen to Romneys ad, you hear the president say this:
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If youve been successful, you didnt get there on your own. You didnt get there on your own. Im always struck by people who think, well, it must be cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something: If youve got a business, you didnt build that. Somebody else made that happen..
Heres what Obama actually said, with the omitted sentences in bold:
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If youve been successful, you didnt get there on your own. You didnt get there on your own. Im always struck by people who think, well, it must be cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If youve got a business, you didnt build that. Somebody else made that happen.
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So, in Romneys ad, that refers to building a business. In Obamas remarks, that refers to the roads and bridges.
My point on Morning Joe was that the media has gotten into a pattern where we listen to presidential candidates say the same thing a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times, and then the one time they stumble over their words or phrase their point inartfully, we jump all over them. It has happened to both Romney and Obama during this cycle. Repeatedly.
What I didnt say, but perhaps should have, is that once we in the media deem something to be a gaffe, the normal rules of journalism cease to apply, and we begin running and rerunning the attack ads that relate to the gaffe, and playing clips of surrogates mocking the gaffe, and so on.
All this is done, in part, to retroactively justify the coverage of the initial comment: See, we told you this would be a big deal, and now it is a big deal. But that is, of course, self-fulfilling, as we have made it a big deal and have handed the opposing campaign a reason to make it a big deal by giving it wall-to-wall coverage. In doing, we create an incentive for both campaigns to engage in more of this kind of behavior, to make more of these kinds of ads. We are, in effect, encouraging a race to the bottom.
*snip*
since obamas ads were debunked about Bain werent his ads misleading as well?