Fact Checking Obama's Speech

I guess you could say that the Associated Press made an effort to be sort of fair and balanced in its coverage of the presidential address on Tuesday.

In this article, AP fact checks Barack Obama's quasi-State of the Unionish address.

Fact check: Obama glosses over some realities

In delivering his to-do list, the president's assertions deserve scrutiny

President Barack Obama glossed over some complex realities Tuesday in delivering his to-do list to Congress and a nation hungry for economic salvation.
AP takes a passage from Obama's speech and then dissects it. The analysis shows that Obama was misleading on a number of counts.

I'm always caught off-guard when the lib media expose a bit of the truth when it comes to Obama. It's so rare.

But I must give credit where credit is due. AP does show some journalistic, albeit uncharacteristic, spine here.

Another AP offering, however, is pure Obama propaganda. This article is not passed off as a hard news report. It's billed as analysis. I think it should be labeled as an editorial, but "analysis" will have to do.

Ron Fournier, AP's Washington bureau chief, gives his spin on Obama's speech.

Analysis: Obama address renews audacity to hope

President Barack Obama gave America the audacity to hope again.

After describing the U.S. economy in nearly apocalyptic terms for weeks, pushing his $787 billion stimulus plan through Congress, the president used his address to Congress on Tuesday night to tap the deep well of American optimism—the never-say-die spirit that every president tries to capture in words. And great presidents embody.

"We will rebuild. We will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," Obama said, echoing Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

"The answers to our problems don't lie beyond our reach," Obama said. "What is required now for this country is to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more."

The themes of responsibility, accountability and, above all, national community rang throughout an address carefully balanced by the gravity of its times. Job losses. Home foreclosures. Credit crisis. Rising health care costs. Declining trust in government. Obama touched all those bases.

"The impact of this recession is real, and it is everywhere," he said.

..."You should also know," Obama told millions of viewers Tuesday night, "that the money you've deposited in banks across the country is safe; your insurance is secure; and you can rely on the continued operation of our financial system."

He sounded like Roosevelt who, after closing banks briefly in the first days of his presidency, stoked the embers of American optimism. "Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan," Roosevelt said. "Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system. It is up to you to support and make it work. It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail."

Like Roosevelt, Obama asked Americans to unite against pessimism. "We are a nation that has seen promise amid peril, and claimed opportunity from ordeal," Obama said. "Now we must be that nation again."

Like Roosevelt, Obama said his government had already provided the machinery to create jobs, improve access to health care, free up credit and help struggling homeowners.

And, like Roosevelt, he challenged Americans to help fix the nation's woes. Obama even challenged his fellow citizens to recognize their role in creating the problem. "People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford," Obama said, "from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway."

He was blunt but bullish on America.

...In short, he reminded people that America has always seen itself as a "shining city upon a hill," as one of its earliest leaders, John Winthrop, put it—a metaphor that Ronald Reagan reintroduced effectively in the 1980s.

When he addressed Congress, Reagan liked to pepper the audience with average people who did extraordinary things and epitomized the American spirit. Obama borrowed that device, inviting Ty'Sheoma Bethea to join first lady Michelle Obama in the crowd.

Bethea is an eighth-grade student who wrote Congress for help in repairing her dilapidated school, telling lawmakers that she and her fellow students will rise above their conditions because, "We are not quitters."

And that was Obama's bottom-line message to a shaken nation. We are not quitters.

Oh, my God. I can hope again! I can hope again!

Obama has given us the audacity to hope. Everything has turned around with this speech. He's lifted me out of the gloom and doom he's been heaping on the country.

Forget what you see when you read your monthly 401(k) statement. Don't let it get you down. Happy days are here again!

More layoffs are on the way? Forget about it. The time for hope is now.

According to Fournier, Obama is FDR. Maybe he is. I hope not, because if Obama is going to act like FDR, then we're in for nearly a decade of despair and double-digit unemployment. Even scarier, based on the so-called stimulus bill, Obama intends to out-FDR FDR on spending.

I object to Fournier asserting that Obama is like Ronald Reagan. The practice of inviting ordinary Americans who've done extraordinary things and recognizing them during his speech is not something that Obama just resurrected. For decades, that's been SOP for these addresses. Anyway, it's a very superficial comparison.

More important than that, I object to Fournier drawing parallels between Obama's rhetoric and Reagan's "shining city upon a hill" vision of America. Obama delivered some lines tonight. So what? I can't forget what he said throughout his campaign and all his recent "sky is falling," panic-inducing talk.

Obama doesn't see America as a "shining city upon a hill." He sees it as a dump that needs to be seized and transformed with sweeping, massive government programs. He wants people be dependent on government. Government knows best. No, Obama doesn't share Reagan's vision at all.

Obama might be like FDR, but he's not like Reagan.

A question: Why doesn't the Associated Press have an "analysis" that gives the other view?
_______________

Comparing FDR, Reagan, and Obama, Lou Cannon of the New York Times declares that Obama's accomplishments after just a month in office are more impressive than what FDR and Reagan managed to do in a short period of time.

President Barack Obama, the toast of the world before he took the oath of office, is off to a better start than either his detractors or his supporters seem to realize. He’s getting a particularly bad rap on his commitment to bipartisanship — while 74 percent of respondents to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll said he was “trying to work with Republicans,” only 37 percent felt bipartisanship was the right approach, while 56 percent said he should “stick to the policies” he promised in the campaign.

However, it was President Omama’s efforts to reach out to Republican moderates that enabled him to win a crucial victory in the Senate on the most gigantic financial stimulus in the nation’s history. In fact, in terms of what he has accomplished in a short time, Mr. Obama is ahead of two other presidential over-achievers: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

1. I don't think passing the "most gigantic financial stimulus in the nation’s history" is an accomplishment. It's a disgrace because it's not financial stimulus. It's spending and slapping future generations of Americans with insurmountable debt. That gigantic financial so-called stimulus may turn out to be the most gigantic stimulus disaster in the nation's history. Cannon is getting ahead of himself.

2. Ramming the stimulus bill through Congress was not an exercise in bipartisanship. Swaying three Republicans isn't exactly establishing a bipartisan alliance. Cannon notes:

In “The Audacity of Hope,” [Obama] wrote that “genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take.”

The stimulus bill was not the product of an honest bipartisan process. For example, Republicans were shut out of negotiations. Democrats did not post the bill online for 48 hours before voting, as promised. Senators didn't have time to read the bill. There was no "sunlight before signing." This was no honest process of give-and-take.

3. It's more than premature to be making the case that Obama is on course to join the ranks of presidents like FDR and Reagan. It's ridiculous. Obama has to earn his place in history.