Distortions at the DNC

Driving last night, I tuned into NPR hoping to catch a few minutes of the Democratic National Convention. The speaker was the Governor of the State of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, and he was talking about his family story and the American Dream. He moved rapidly from his personal success story to the crises he believes American society is facing today: the poor are worse off than ever, the middle class is one paycheck away from poverty, and other hyperbolic characterizations of American problems.

The problem with Governor Patrick's speech is very basic. The Governor is distorting the truth of things. It may or may not be intentional, but the pictures he paints of American society and the Republican candidate are inaccurate. The truth matters.

Look at his comments on John McCain and the Republicans:

Now, John McCain says he believes in education, too. But he is against fully funding No Child Left Behind, against fully funding Head Start, against hiring more teachers and wants to abolish the Department of Education. This should come as no surprise. John McCain is just more of the same say-one-thing-do-another crowd in the White House today.

The same folks who say they believe in small government and fiscal restraint are responsible for the biggest expansion in the size of government and the size of the federal deficit in American history. The same folks, with John McCain leading the charge, who say they support seniors, want to privatize Social Security and put corporate pension funds up for grabs. The same folks who call themselves "compassionate conservatives" are the folks who abandoned all those people not only after Katrina, but before that storm. The American people have had enough.

Unless the Governor is woefully ignorant, the first pargraph quoted above is entirely a lie. A cursory reading of John McCain's education policy website suffices to demonstrate this. He certainly doesn't have plans to abolish the Department of Education.

The second paragraph is at best a half-truth. He conflates disagreements within the Republican party and mistakingly suggests there is one "Republican" opinion on how to govern. The truth is, Republicans have disagreed about the best way to govern for a while. This is why you see many conservatives (if not all) unhappy with GWB's presidency. George Bush may be fairly said to represent one type of Republican - but Bush is not a conservative. Bush never said he believed in limited government or fiscal restraint. He has been, from the start, a "compassionate conservative", which can be roughly defined as someone who believes in using government to pursue "conservative" ends.

Because of all these distortions, I was only able to stomach these 3-5 minutes of the speech. From some of the other commentary I've seen, it sounds like the rest of the convention was more of the same. These lies are another reason, apart from their policy preferences, that I cannot support the Democrats. Deval Patrick's speech may not have been very truthful, but I suppose it did serve well the cause of painting his opponents as hypocrites. So who cares if it isn't true!?