For birthday of president No. 1, a look No. 44

In honor of Washington’s Birthday, we’re throwing the spotlight on our current leader’s record for truth-telling.

President Barack Obama, PolitiFact’s most fact-checked politician, has faced the Truth-O-Meter more than 340 times since our first Obama item in June 2007.

He’s earned ratings of True or Mostly True 46 percent of the time — and 71 percent of his ratings have been Half True or better.

At the other end of the spectrum, he’s racked up 42 Mostly False and 52 False ratings — and five Pants on Fires:

• “Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich all say they would cut foreign aid to Israel — and every other country — to zero.”

• “What I have done — and this is unprecedented … is I’ve said to each agency … ‘look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don’t make sense, let’s get rid of them.‘”

• “If you actually took the number of Muslims [sic] Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.“

• “And 100 percent, John (McCain), of your ads . . . 100 percent of them have been negative.“

• Obama ad contends that John McCain endorses Rush Limbaugh’s comments about immigration.

Now, if only that story about George Washington and the cherry tree (“I can’t tell a lie!”) were true.