The Washington Post launched a series of Republican presidential candidate profiles on Sunday (12/11/11). First up was Mitt Romney, and right away you sense there's something a little off here.

Here's the headline and subhead:

The Problem Solver

Mitt Romney doesn't want to talk about feeling voters' pain. He just wants to get to work relieving it.

Reporter Ann Gerhart's piece begins:

The mind of Mitt Romney is a supremely rational place.

The article is full of quotes from Romney supporters, alongside nods of approval from the reporter:

He is a man with a prodigious intellect who has been married to his high school sweetheart for 42 years, donates 10 percent of his money to his church (a considerable sum, as his self-made fortune is upward of $250 million) and, those close to him to say, acts generously, earns the loyalty of his staff and drives himself relentlessly to get the job done, whatever it is.

For good measure, readers learn that "Romney is Dudley Do-Right in a Kim Kardashian world." Yes, that's a real quote.

It's not all puffery, mind you; at one point Romney faces comes in for some harsh criticism:

He seems too perfect and tidy, his trim hair and waistline in keeping with his disciplined mien and his formidable multi-state operation. His fastidiousness can border on the fussy.

And Romney's stint in the private sector apparently went like this:

With his characteristic work ethic, after investing in a company as head of Bain Capital, Romney would roll up his sleeves, learn the business like an insider and re-envision it--with the imperative of increasing profitability as the guiding principle.

The piece closes with Romney's brother explaining that he has an "overriding philosophy about caring for people," which Gerhart used to sum up:

And in service of these goals, Romney’s flip-floppery could be interpreted as a flexibility of thinking that might help him bust through warring ideologies in Washington--an asset, not a deficit--and fix his biggest set of problems yet.

Will every candidate get this kind of treatment? It's too early to tell. But today (12/12/11) the Post profiles Rick Perry, and his piece opens with this:

He has always had it, an ease and a charm that only the naturals possess, a confidence that bears the stamp of a man aware of his gifts.

The next part-- "Few can match Texas Gov. Rick Perry's allure...."-- isn't much better, but the piece overall takes a much more critical tone, perhaps due to the state of Perry's presidential campaign.

Political campaign watchers seem to agree that the election will be about the economy, and that Republicans probably won't have much to say about Obama's foreign policy (partly because it doesn't much differ from what a Republican president might be doing).

The New York  Times' Richard Oppel has a piece today headlined, "Republican Candidates Aim at Obama Foreign Policy."

So what exactly is the Republican case against Obama's foreign policy? That it's too soft on the Hezbollah menace on our southern border.
Seriously.

Oppel writes:

A small but revealing episode unfolded in the closing minutes of the last Republican presidential debate. After the candidates were asked to name the national security issue they most worry about, which had not yet been discussed, Rick Santorum cited radical Islamists in Central and South America.

Mitt Romney agreed, saying that Hezbollah, a militant Shiite group in Lebanon that is backed by Iran and Syria, was working in Mexico, Venezuela and throughout Latin America, posing an "imminent threat." Earlier in the night, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas warned that Hezbollah, as well as Hamas, the Palestinian militant organization that controls Gaza, also were working in Mexico.

That the candidates would cite the same threat--one denied by the Mexican government, and which seemed to contrast with a State Department report that there are no Hezbollah-related operational cells in this hemisphere--was not a coincidence.

Oppel adds that  "a major thrust of the Republican foreign-policy argument" will include this kind of rhetoric about Obama being "too soft" on the likes of "Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians."

If a journalist is looking to inform voters, it might help to give them a sense of whether what these candidates are saying is grounded in reality. PolitiFact judged  Romney's Hezbollah comments "Mostly False," pointing out that the claim appears to come from a paper by former Bush assistant secretary of state Roger Noriega--and that the paper argues that most of the activity in Latin America is related to fundraising--criminal activity that funnels money back to Lebanon.

The Times judges the accuracy of the Republican charges in passing--the candidates' claims "seemed to contrast with a State Department report." ` The piece is far more concerned with the political strategy at work, and how Republicans might be trying to appeal to some Jewish voters with a message about Obama being soft on Islamic terrorists. It's a strategy that will likely be a lot more successful if reporters aren't going to call them out.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry's new TV commercial is based on a lie. Will reporters say so?

The ad starts with a Barack Obama quote: ''We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.''

To which Perry responds:  ''Can you believe that? That's what our president thinks is wrong with America? That Americans are lazy? That's pathetic. It's time to clean house in Washington.''

Now, it would be rather unusual for a president to say that.

Obama didn't.

The quote comes from an event where Obama spoke about efforts to woo corporations to do more business in America. Obama's response was that government should being doing more to improve the business environment for corporations--to "make it easier for foreign investors to build a plant in the United States."

If anything, Obama is saying the government has been lazy in its approach to pleasing corporations. As MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell explained last night, this is the kind of thing you can imagine coming from the mouths of Republican politicians and candidates.

So how are media doing fact-checking Perry's claim?

Today (11/18/11) the New York Times has a piece headlined "Perry's Latest Attacks Distort Obama's Words and Past." That's pretty good--though it's a little strange to see the paper's somewhat passive description of Perry's mendacity: "Some of his recent attacks have drifted into the realm of falsehood." How on Earth did they drift into that realm?

But the piece is an improvement over the Times' take on the ad a day earlier, written by the same reporter (Richard Oppel). That article led with the news that that the  commercial "takes a sharper tone" than Perry's previous ads, and that it "may be an effort to shift attention from Mr. Perry's recent stumbles by attacking the White House."

In the sixth paragraph, readers are finally told that "the ad takes Mr. Obama's remark out of context."

Mitt Romney has also been twisting Obama's "lazy" comment, with little push back from the press. Another Times piece described Romney's attack:

Mr. Romney's critique sounded a familiar theme in the Republican primary contest--that the president is out of touch with the ordinary American worker.

Later in the article, an Obama spokesperson says Romney is taking the comments out of context--which is the kind of thing journalists should point out themselves.

In the Washington Post, Chris Cilizza reported the Perry ad this way:

His latest ad, which began airing Wednesday in Iowa and on national cable stations, takes Obama to task for a recent comment that America has grown "a little bit lazy" in attracting foreign investment.

He added:

Romney also took issue with the comment this week, accusing Obama of calling Americans lazy. "I don't think that describes Americans," he said.

And once again, an Obama spokesperson steps in, near the end of the piece, to try and set things straight.

If this is any indication of how the press is going to handle campaign season lying, things look pretty bleak.

One bright spot came on the CBS Evening News (11/17/11):

SCOTT PELLEY: As we get pulled into this campaign season, you'll be seeing a lot of ads by the candidates. And from time to time, we're going to offer some background on the claims that all the candidates are making. This one caught our eye today. Texas Governor Rick Perry is running a spot about what he describes as an outrageous comment made by President Obama.

OBAMA: We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.

GOV. RICK PERRY (R), TEXAS: Can you believe that? That's what our president thinks is wrong with America, that Americans are lazy? That's pathetic.

PELLEY: That would be pathetic. So we hunted down the full comments the president made during an interview Saturday at the Pacific Economic Summit. He'd been asked about U.S. businesses marketing themselves overseas.

OBAMA: There are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity. Our stability, our openness, our innovative, free-market culture. But, you know, we've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We've kind of taken for granted, well, people will want to come here, and we aren't out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.

PELLEY: There it is in context.

There--that wasn't so hard, was it?

UPDATE: Syntactical glitch in first sentence fixed.

Just because he wears cowboy boots and drops his G's doesn't mean he's a dummy. Perry may be a small-town boy who went to an ag school (Texas A&M University), but he's an extremely cagey and strategic politician who has been among the state's most successful governors at getting what he wants. Put another way: Even if he's not book smart by University of Chicago standards, he's plenty street smart - and street smart is still smart. The better lens through which to regard Perry is inside vs. outside, establishment vs. anti-establishment, elitist vs. jus' folks. Don't make the mistake of thinking that jus' folks is jus' dumb.

--Evan Smith ("5 Myths About Rick Perry," Washington Post, 8/21/11)

Whatever his brain power is, he was elected three times governor of Texas. He is now a first-tier presidential contender. He's smart enough to be President of the United States. He's smart enough to be elected, I think. At this point, I think we can stipulate that. So whatever his book smarts are, I think that's irrelevant for this discussion. He has clearly met the bar in Texas several times. The voters in Texas have said three times he's smart enough to be governor, and he's had a record that he's now running on.

--ABC World News senior Washington editor Rick Klein (Fox News' On the Record, 8/29/11)

Liberals often say Republicans are stupid, but they really believe it with regard to Gov. Perry. For liberals, credentials and holding fashionable opinions are more important markers of intelligence than knowledge or accomplishment.... Gov. Perry scorns their opinions, and he went to Texas A&M, not Harvard or Yale. So when a new book said his is "the brainiest political operation in America," liberals were shocked.
--Jack Kelly ("Kicking Rick: Mainstream Media and Democrats Fear the Texas Governor, So They Smear Him," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/4/11)

What those dummies Bush and Perry have in common, other than having been Texas governors, pilots and cheerleaders (what is it with Texas?), is that they're not stupid at all.... They're smart enough to know that most people in this country didn't go to Ivy League colleges -- or any college for that matter.... Until someone emerges to remind Americans of who they are in a way that neither insults their intelligence nor condescends to their less-fortunate circumstances, smart money goes to the "stupid" politicians, who are dumb as foxes and happy as clams when their opponents misunderestimate them.
--Kathleen Parker ("Not So Dumb After All," Washington Post, 9/18/11)

I will tell you: It's three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone: Commerce, Education and the--what's the third one there? Let's see.... OK. So Commerce, Education and the-- ... The third agency of government I would--I would do away with the Education, the ... Commerce and--let's see--I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops.

--Rick Perry (Republican presidential debate, 11/9/11)

When he's not sharing his thoughts about Barack Obama's birth certificate, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is apparently unveiling a tax plan. It's a flat tax, with a few other details explained by the Washington Post (10/26/11):

Perry also would reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent; eliminate taxes on dividends and capital gains; make deep, unspecified cuts in federal spending; and establish individual retirement accounts outside the Social Security system.

The article, by Karen Tumulty, gets approving quotes from a Republican adviser and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist. But it also says this, in the reporter's own voice:

The proposal would be a boon to the wealthiest Americans, and that is one reason why previous flat-tax proposals, though appealing in their simplicity, have never gone far politically.

Indeed. If there's one thing that doesn't go far politically, it's tax policy that favors the wealthy.

ABC This Week (9/25/11):

CHRISTINE AMANPOUR: And coming up, Rick Perry on the ropes.

PERRY: Yep, there may be slicker candidates and there may be smoother debaters, but I know what I believe in, and I'm going to stand on that belief every day. I will guide this country with a deep, deep rudder.

AMANPOUR: Can the new frontrunner come back from a shaky debate performance? Or is Chris Christie waiting in the wings to steal his thunder?

New York Times (9/26/11):

After Perry's Debate Showing, Eyes Turn Toward Christie

Washington Post (9/26/11):

Texas Gov. Rick Perry's recent stumbles--his rambling attempt at last week's GOP presidential debate to attack former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's flip-flopping is a prime example--have renewed speculation that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie might rethink his "no go" decision on the 2012 race.

The front page of USA Today (9/19/11) tells us that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is taking "the heat," but not to worry--he says he can handle it.

That's especially true with reporters like Susan Page on his side:

He's not worried, he said, because only one issue really matters to Americans in this election. It's the one he plans to ride first against his Republican rivals and then against President Obama.

Jobs.

"I'll be asked about a hundred different issues a thousand different ways," he said in the interview Friday, one of only a few he has done since announcing his candidacy last month. "But it is about who has the record, who has the vision to get Americans working again." That's what "Republicans, independents and even, I think, a number of Democrats … are looking for."

As he told those at a county GOP dinner in Jefferson, a coffeehouse crowd in Newton and workers at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Atlantic, he can cite job-creation statistics in Texas that are the envy of the nation's other 49 governors. The Lone Star State has accounted for 40 percent of the jobs created in the United States since June 2009.

We've been through this before (and we'll go through it many, many more times).

It's likely that a competent governor--and certainly a competent reporter--would be more concerned about the unemployment rate in a given state, which takes into account not only how many people have jobs but how many people need jobs. On that score, Texas is right in the middle of the pack. So there are plenty of governors who actually wouldn't envy Texas.

Page goes on:

Now Perry is pouncing on [Mitt] Romney with the brio of a rodeo cowboy lassoing a bull.

To every audience, he ridicules Romney's record on jobs when he was governor (Massachusetts ranked 47th nationwide)....

The unemployment rate in Massachusetts is more than a point lower than it is in Texas. Something Page could have found out even without a lasso.

A Washington Post story on Sunday (9/18/11) argues that many recipients of Social Security aren't really paying attention to what the GOP presidential front-runners are saying about Social Security. The real story, then, is what kind of narrative the candidates are trying to establish. As reporter Amy Gardner puts it:

In many ways, it doesn't matter to the candidates whether people are attuned to what they are actually saying about Social Security. For them, the issue is instead serving as a proxy for the narrative each is trying to establish about himself.

For Perry, standing by his brash statements on Social Security--he has called it a "Ponzi scheme" and a "monstrous lie"--presents a chance to show that he's a straight-shooter unafraid to confront the nation's toughest challenges.

"I don't get particularly concerned that I need to back off from my factual statement that Social Security, as it is structured today, is broken," Perry said in an interview published in Time magazine last week. "If you want to call it a Ponzi scheme, if you want to say it's a criminal enterprise, if you just want to say it's broken--they all get to the same point. We need, as a country, to have an adult conversation."

This is actually a great illustration of a terrible problem with political reporting. How candidates are using policy discussions to frame their candidacies is actually much less important than whether what they're saying is nonsense.

Perry's Social Security claims are wildly misleading. Press coverage should explain that to readers (and, you know, voters) instead of talking about how his inaccurate claims means he's a "straight-shooter."

From Time magazine's Rick Perry cover story (9/26/11):

When you look at Perry, it's easy to picture him in an old Western. His late arrival in the primary field in August certainly felt like that moment when the big stranger steps through the swinging saloon doors and all heads pivot and the plinky-plunk piano dies away.

Wait-- there's more!

Moreover, Perry doesn't mind kicking over idols in the high church of conventional wisdom, a favorite Tea Party pastime. He's the one who calls Social Security a "monstrous lie," throwing in "Ponzi scheme" for good measure. Social Security is called the third rail of American politics, which is, of course, a reference to the electrified portion of a subway track. Touch it and you die. But there aren't any subways where Rick Perry comes from.

Frontrunner-of-the-moment Rick Perry is getting a lot of press for his performance at the recent Republican debate--especially because he's standing by his belief that Social Security is a "monstrous lie" and a Ponzi scheme, and that climate change is an untested theory advanced by corrupt, discredited scientists.

You can call such ideas a lot of things. "False" or "untrue," for example, would work. But a lot of reporters characterized Perry's performance in positive terms. In today's New York Times (9/9/11), Michael Shear writes that Perry

made clear in his first national appearance that he would campaign as an unabashed Southern conservative who is unafraid to speak bluntly, would double-down on controversial statements and planned to shrug off the concerns of the Republican establishment.

Shear later added that "Perry did not back down Wednesday night from his assertion that Social Security was a failure, even in the face of direct criticism by Mr. Romney."

"Unabashed," "unafraid," not backing down--these are all more or less positive descriptions.

Likewise, on NBC Nightly News (9/8/11), Andrea Mitchell said: "Perry proved he could throw a punch and take one. And he was unapologetic about attacking Social Security as a monstrous lie."

So he's not only a fearlessly blunt speaker, he's also an unapologetic punch-thrower. This is the kind of coverage the Perry campaign would probably pay for. Yes, there are pieces here and there that point out that, you know, Social Security isn't actually a massive scam. On the other hand, Washington Post liberal Ruth Marcus writes today (9/9/11): "On the substance, Perry’s point about Social Security-as-Ponzi scheme has some grounding in reality." She gets around to criticizing him, but that's a lot of ground to cede to a falsehood.

As Greg Marx notes at CJR,  the media designation of certain pieces as "factchecks" is strange because one might logically conclude that run-of-the-mill articles don't dwell on checking the facts of politicians (a conclusion that would largely be a correct one). He points to a CBS News piece on Perry and Social Security that quotes other Republicans disagreeing with his stance. Readers are apparently being asked to believe either Karl Rove or Rick Perry on the issue. That's a lot to ask of anyone.

There is little reason to care about what the polls say right now about who's leading in the Republican presidential nomination. But the media obviously think otherwise, hence this headline in the Washington Post yesterday (8/25/11):

Romney Loses GOP Front-Runner Status

The "news" is that Rick Perry is leading in a new Gallup Poll. But read a little further:

The survey showed Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) at 13 percent and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) slipping to 10 percent. No other candidate registered in the double digits.

So this means Paul's in the "top tier" now, right?

This is a good time to issue a quick reminder about the hazards of paying too much attention to early polling:

In 2003, early polling of the following year's Democratic nominees (e.g., CBS News poll, 12/14-12/16/03) showed eventual nominee John Kerry in the middle of the pack, trailing Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Richard Gephardt and Joe Lieberman. An August 2003 USA Today/Gallup poll (8/25-8/26/03) showed front-runner Lieberman with a 10-point lead over Gephardt. As the dynamics of the nomination race shifted, so did the polls--but not in a way that would suggest the polling would predict the winner. By January 2004, Howard Dean was leading the pack, followed closely by Wesley Clark (1/2-5/04).

On the Republican side:

in the 2000 race, Bush's only serious competition came from Sen. John McCain, who was trailing far behind in the early polls--behind Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle and Steve Forbes (e.g., NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 1/99).

On NBC Nightly News (8/16/11):

ANDREA MITCHELL: Perry's Texas swagger is his calling card, bred of a hardscrabble boyhood on the family farm and Aggie roots at Texas A&M. Perry's chief claim to challenging President Obama is the Texas jobs record. Perry says his state produced 40 percent of all the jobs created across America in the last two years, with an unemployment rate at 8.2 percent, well below the national average, partly because of the oil and gas boom, partly because of growing trade with Mexico and federal defense spending in Texas.

Since Perry's campaign is based almost entirely on his state's jobs miracle, it's not too much to ask that journalists get this straight.

An 8.2 percent unemployment rate is not "well below the national average."  The national rate is a little over 9 percent. So, yes, Texas is doing better than the country as a whole--but not by much. Compare Texas to other states, though, and things don't look so great: The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 26 states have a lower unemployment rate than Texas.

As we've said plenty of times before,  one of the main jobs of campaign journalists is winnowing the field of candidates-- which must come as a relief to voters who don't want to have more of a say in the process.

Before the results of the Iowa straw poll rolled in this weekend, there were pieces about whether anyone should pay attention to the event in the first place.  Most reporters are willing to admit that paying so much attention to an elaborate popularity contest where the candidates pay voters to participate is a little odd.

The lesson for readers comes afterwards, though--when reporters nevertheless assign meaning to the event.

The main takeaway from this weekend seems to be that we now have a "top tier" of Republican candidates. "GOP now has 'three-person race' after  poll," says USA Today. "Top tier puts GOP contest in focus," says a Washington Post headline.

So the "top tier"-- i.e., the candidates we're supposed to actually pay attention t0-- consists of the straw poll winner-- who most observers believe has almost no chance of actually winning the nomination-- plus two candidates who didn't participate in the contest-- one of whom has been a candidate for all of one weekend.

And, naturally, the person who nearly won the straw poll is a "nuisance," according to NBC's Chuck Todd (Meet the Press, 8/14/11):

Well, it was a shake-up, and we have a top tier. It is Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. There are a couple of other candidates that can make some waves. Ron Paul proved that he can do that, he's going to be a nuisance to the field.

Of course, even if Ron Paul had won the straw poll instead of finishing a close second, it's rather unlikely he'd be in media's "top tier."

Does narrowing the field down at this point help any voters assess the candidates? Does it clear up questions about what the candidates are saying about the issues? Of course not. But it gives campaign reporters a horse race with fewer horses. Which is apparently what they want.

The speculation about whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry will jump into the Republican presidential race boils down to one word: Jobs. Perry's state has been generating jobs at an impressive rate--which Perry likes to think is due to low taxes and lax regulations. Some of the coverage points to important caveats--the booming oil economy, for instance, and rapid population growth both make Texas fairly unrepresentative.

Today the Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece by Ana Campoy and Sara Murray  about the Texas miracle. The papers shows that many of these jobs are in the public sector; a million total new jobs over the past decade, but roughly "300,000 of the new Texas jobs were in government."

What's more, this graph accompanying the piece shows the rate of private sector job creation declining since 2008, while the rate of growth in  public employment* continues to rise:

The Journal includes this typical line from Perry:

"Government doesn't create any jobs," he said last month on Glenn Beck's show on Fox News. "They can actually run jobs away."

He's partly right. As the Journal points out, Perry's budget cuts will lead to job losses in the public sector, particularly in the public schools. While he might not deserve credit for the Texas job boom, he can claim credit for some likely job losses.

*Note: Corrected to more accurately reflect the chart (thanks to commenter Kyle O.)

The cover of Newsweek (4/26/10) proclaims: "Don't Mess With Texas: What Governor Rick Perry's Hard-Right Creed Tells Us About America."

I can't say I learned much about America, but I guess I learned something about Newsweek:  They really like Rick Perry.

The story, by Evan Thomas and Arian Campo-Flores, begins with the observation, "The myth of the once and future king is as old as Camelot, as ancient as the Bible." Perry, it seems, is a living example of such a "redeemer":

In Texas, his name is Rick Perry. Raised in a ranch house with no running water in the West Texas town of Paint Creek, yell leader at Texas A&M, Air Force pilot, longest serving governor in Texas history. Ruggedly handsome in a Marlboro Man sort of way, with a rich mane of brown hair, slightly tinged with silver gray. Perry, 60, stands for less government and more growth, for freedom and against bureaucracy, for Texas and against Washington. It's a message that has made him a very popular politician in Texas, particularly among conservative white males. As the Tea Party movement gains momentum, as more Americans are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, Perry is their kind of hero.

Newsweek goes on to wonder if Perry might really be "the second coming of Ronald Reagan, the plain-spoken man from the West who presided over a new 'Morning in America' by cutting taxes, reducing government (well, promising to) and standing tall against the nation's enemies?"

Well, gee, maybe they should just skip the election? Would anyone be foolish enough to run against this handsome savior? Yes, it turns out--an uninspiring bald guy:

Perry's Democratic opponent in November will be Bill White, the popular three-term mayor of Houston. White couldn't be more different from Perry. He went to Harvard. He speaks fluent Spanish. He's pasty white, with a bald pate and big ears. He talks in an even, slow monotone and refrains from gunslinging rhetoric. He's kind of like President Obama without the good looks and charisma--a cerebral man who craves consensus and relishes tackling problems by gathering a roomful of smart people with diverse views to hash things out.

What a bore.

After the story's fourth paragraph tells us that under Perry, "Texas somehow avoided the worst of the Great Recession," the second-to-last sentence discloses that the Texas economic miracle might turn sour in a hurry:  "Economic experts are predicting a shortfall of at least $15 billion in the coming year." This after the state got $16 billion in stimulus money from the federal government last year. (Perry, you see, thinks Obama "is hellbent on taking America towards a socialist country.")

And you wouldn't know this from reading Newsweek's puff piece, but Perry and his pasty, uncharismatic Democratic challenger are in a pretty tight race, with Perry holding a four-point lead. Newsweek doesn't have time to mess with such nuance.