SOTU — Superb or So-So?
Three quarters of those watching the State Of The Union speech approved of the speech, even though virtually every analyses of the speech found three quarters of it to be false or misleading. What does that tell you about the state of the American political environment?
To make the question even more interesting, consider this: Most of those who approved of his speech cited the call for unity. Most of the criticisms of his speech focused on the “discordant” call for unity.
The approval rating has been discounted by some analysts because the majority of the audience was Republican. There’s some truth to that, but only ‘some.’ Forgive me, it’s been a while since I’ve taken my statistics courses but let me crunch some numbers for you.
In the CNN poll, the majority of viewers (59%) gave it a ‘very positive’ review with another 17% calling it ‘somewhat positive.’ The people watching were indeed largely Republican with 42% identifying themselves that way versus 21% identifying as Democrats and 35% saying they were either Independent or another party. The full poll results showed some dissident Republicans thought he wasn’t conservative enough. Even so, the numbers showed it wasn’t only Republicans giving him high marks. Nearly nine out ten of those Republican viewers (87%) gave him those very positive views, but so did half of the Independents (57%) as well. Not surprisingly, or maybe surprisingly, depending on your take on the subject, a third of the Democrats (37%) also provided ‘very positive’ review.
In the CBS poll, it was almost exactly the same story with three quarters of the viewers giving his speech ‘very positive’ or ‘positive’ reviews, but again with a substantial minority of those viewers (43%) identifying themselves as Republicans. So, yet again the approval crossed party lines.
It would be nice to think that would indicate some bipartisan efforts at unity would be possible, and even though people want that, more than half of those surveyed in both polls said they doubted it would happen. The attitude as to whether it would, or could, happen again broke down on the same partisan party lines with Republicans more hopeful and Democrats less hopeful.
“It was a speech that was billed as bipartisan, but beneath the flowery language were the same sharp divides and disagreements.”
That was the BBC’s North American reporter Anthony Zurcher’s basic summation of the five key take-aways from the speech. In the end he labeled it as simply “a re-election pitch.”
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake in his summary of the five key take-aways says Trump clearly wanted his speech to be “a high minded missive about common ground,” but Blake said that kind of language “completely glosses over… his divisive political strategy (and his) unyielding, uncompromising and controversial style that relies on fomenting culture wars and humiliating those who run afoul of him.”
But now to the other three quarters — the fact checking of his statements. The New York Times team cited 14 statements of which three were cited as true. The team at website PolitiFact cited 15 statements of which three were cited as true. The New York Times article had four categories to put Trump’s statements in — True, False, Misleading or Exaggerated. The Politifact article cites three statements as accurate and 12 as either inaccurate, exaggerated or lacking context. However, the exact wording used by Politifact editors varies.
For example, The New York Times labelled Trump’s statement on abortion as “misleading.” Politifact says his statements “distort” the issue. Both reports also make a point that many of the statements labelled semi-true were the result of policies started during the Obama administration.
Candidly it is hard to determine which of the statements the Politifact team labelled as accurate because of the variation in the wording. In fairness therefore, there appears to be more statements that are ‘more or less’ accurate than just the three cited. For example: -
Statement: Unemployment levels for minorities lowest level. Response: Accurate but out of date.
Statement: Americans pay more for drugs than any other country. Response: Generally accurate.
Statement: US #1 exporter of oil and gas. Response: Mostly accurate.
Statement: US net exporter of energy. Response: Will be true in 2020.
Statement: NATO allies increased spending support. Response: Maybe true in two years.
The New York Times report is a little clearer in terms of what it deems right and what it deems wrong. For example, the statement by Trump that wages were “growing for blue-collar workers and … growing faster than anyone thought possible” is simply labeled True with the added proviso that is true that manufacturing jobs are rising faster than service jobs. The Politifact report touches on the statement that “wages are rising at their fast pace in decades” — a slightly different but related statement. Politifact reporters agree that wages are rising fast but add that it started under the Obama administration and that they rose faster during both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
The other two statements cited as TRUE by the New York Times are
— That ISIS two years ago controlled 20,000 square miles in Syria and Iraq but “we have liberated virtually all of the territory from the grip of these bloodthirsty monsters.”
— That “our Treasury is receiving billions and billions of dollars” because of the tariffs imposed on China, although it does note that much of that money may be coming from American consumers in the form of high prices for goods.
“The president had some good moments and some bad ones, some funny moments and some awkward ones”
That from FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver’s commentary about Trump’s speech. He question even when it was “newsworthy” because it was such a “hodgepodge that really didn’t cohere into anything that’s going to matter.”
Unfortunately, in the end, that may come as close to being a fact as anything else.
(Disclaimer: In this report, I have cited six different news media sources. Careful readers will notice that I have not included Fox News or CNN. I did not include Fox News because it leans so far right that it’s almost falling over and has reached a point about being a questionable true news source. I did not include CNN out of a sense of fairness and balance. The website mediabiasfactcheck says CNN has tended lately to lean left… lean, not fall over, mind you. I did not include MSNBC either, but that’s also because it leans so far left that its reporting may be questionable.)
As a final note, let me make a personal observation. Much of the analyses and most of the surveys focused on the issues of the economy, “the wall” and illegal immigration. There is little doubt that the economy, as always, will always be a critical issue. The issue of illegal immigration is a ‘maybe in my view. Instead, I believe that his speech added two new ‘hot-button’ topics: late-term abortion and the so-called socialism. Both topics drew a lot more emotional reaction from people and he and the alt-right faithful will play on that for all it’s worth.
