Talking hope, on the 50-yard line
SUMMARY: In a Denver football stadium, Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination. We check his facts.
It was a political rally of epic proportions: more than 84,000 people packed into a football stadium chanting “Yes we can!” On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech,” Sen. Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president and told the crowd that “It’s time for us to change America.”
We checked several of Obama’s claims and a couple more from other speakers at the Democratic convention:
• We found Obama was doing a little cherry-picking with his claim that Sen. John McCain “said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars.” In fact, McCain has a mixed record, having opposed such measures in 2003 and 2005. But he was such a leader in the effort to raise fuel economy that he was lauded by Sen. Edward Kennedy. We gave Obama’s claim a
Barely True.
• Obama also was off with his comparison of family income during the Clinton and Bush administrations. We rated that one
Half True.
• But Obama was correct with his claim that oil imports have tripled since John McCain joined Congress. That one earned a
True.
• And he also got the number right on a popular claim among Democrats this week when he said, “John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time.”
Another True.
We also checked a couple of other claims from Sen. Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate:
• Biden correctly quoted McCain as saying, “Afghanistan — we don’t read about it anymore in papers because it succeeded.” We gave that one a
True.
• We also found that Biden had his number right that McCain voted 19 times against a minimum-wage increase. Another
True.
