In politics, the art of twisting the interpretation of the facts or daily occurrences is known as "spin" and every politician who has ever been elected to anything does this to a greater or lesser extent. It is a necessary evil to the game. After all, as no less of a luminary than the renowned Obi Wan Kenobi once stated "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view". Or, to put it more bluntly, we, as humans, tend to subconsciously interpret things that happen in a manner that is consistent with our own worldview. We ascribe noble motives to people we like and ignoble ones to people we don't like. It is human nature to a certain extent. But the line between spin and outright, blatant falsehood is a fine one that is often times crossed in the heat of battle. Or, if you want more prose and less poetry, sometimes people blunder into unreality in the course of trying to put a positive interpretation on something that occurs. Reference Dick Cheney and "the insurgency is in its last throes" for further details on this practice. With that in mind, I think it is important to point out some of the spin that I have seen floating around the U.S. elections during this primary season. Since the Republican primary is, more or less, locked up by Senator John McCain, I'm going to focus on the Democrats. I'll begin with Hillary spin (since I'm not terribly fond of her and there is more of it for me to choose from) and then, with ChiliDragon's help, grudgingly, call out a couple of pieces of the rarer Obama spin. Author's Note: The art of spinning is a fine one. Really what a person is doing when they are spinning is taking two blatant lies, one half-truth and marinating it with a completely true fact or two artfully presented in order to get the whole meal accepted as true. You throw in just enough believability to make the entire package sound plausible and count on the inherent intellectual laziness that most people have to avoid having the whole thing properly examined. Hillary Spin #1: Barack Obama is a Muslim It is true that Barack Obama's father is a native Kenyan who was born a Muslim. (Fact) It is also true that, as a child, Obama attended a predominantly Muslim school as a young child (fact) that offered, along with Christian education, classes in Muslim theology (half-truth). The implication that has been nosed around is that Barack Obama was educated in a Madrassa (fundamentalist Muslim) school and that he is a closet Osama bin Laden sympathizer. He's a Manchurian Candidate if you will. (Utterly false) The truth is that, just like the talking point that Al Gore "claimed to invent the Internet", the reality is that it is a outright falsehood. Even putting aside the link I just provided, which goes over in detail why this is false, it is also false due to complete common sense. Senator Obama has been serving in public office for eleven years. Before that, he was a Constitutional Law professor at one of the country's top, and most conservative, law schools, the University of Chicago. Before that he was president of the Harvard Law Review when he was in college. Harvard is only, arguably, the most prestigious law school in the entire freaking world. Don't you think that, at some point, the fact he was a fundamentalist Muslim would have come out if it were true? Now, Hillary Clinton supporters might be calling foul at this point. After all, the chains of emails that claim he is a Muslim are, sadly, anonymous at this point. Nobody is 100% certain what the origin is. This is where logic comes into play. As in, logically, who is best served by these emails? For the sake of argument, if I'm a Republican, I consider spreading this particular narrative to be counterproductive.

Theoretically at least, before Obama shocked the entire civilized world by revealing himself to be one of the most gifted politicians since Bill Clinton, these emails allow Hillary Clinton a much easier path to the Democratic nomination. Given that it is in the Republicans' best interest to make Hillary spend as much time and money and resources as possible before she gets to the general election fight against the Republican candidate, it seems unlikely that a Republican organized this particular bit of spin. I'd also add that the Hillary campaign has disciplined paid staff members who the press caught spreading these emails at least twice. Hillary Spin #2: Barack Obama is unelectable in a general election This spin actually covers several categories. It starts with Obama's admittedly thin resume in national politics (true), continues to the fact that he hasn't been fully subjected to the "Republican Attack Machine" (true) then continues by saying he lacks experience (misleading, he actually has more years in elected office and won more elections than she has) and is layered with a subtle appeal to old school racism by saying that the country isn't ready to elect a black man. (Potentially false...but also potentially true. I guess we'll see.) I want to begin shooting down this particular bit of spin with some blunt honesty: declaring your opponent as being unelectable in a general election is a tactic as old as time itself. It's probably older than my dad...and my dad is older than dirt. Primary elections in the U.S., until this year, were predominantly decided by very committed activists in the party.

These activists tend to be either the most liberal (Democrats) or the most conservative (Republicans) representatives of their party. Since most of these activists are also close followers of politics, they know that the fringe folks, the ones on either the far left or the far right of a party, tend to be unsuccessful in a general election where appealing to the center is usually a winning strategy. This creates the insane dynamic wherein a candidate in a primary has to do everything possible to secure the "base" (loosely translated: the extreme ends of their particular party who are actually motivated enough to vote in a primary) while simultaneously not saying anything that can be used in campaign commercials in a general election by their opponent seeking to paint them as being "outside the mainstream". If these two impulses seem to be contradictory it is because they are.

This is painfully evident in the current election. Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, is in trouble with his base because they don't think he is sufficiently conservative enough for them. In order to satisfy them that he is a "true conservative" he may have to take positions on issues that will make him unpalatable to independents in a general election.

Similarly, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is widely reviled by liberal activists for authorizing President Bush to go to war in Iraq because they view that as a calculated political vote. In other words, she voted like that so she wouldn't appear to be "weak" on National Security when she was running for President a couple of years later. Relating this all back to Senator Obama's electability, Senator Clinton says that Senator Obama is unelectable once we get past the Democratic primary and into the general election. Like a lot of spin, this could potentially have some truth or be an outright lie depending on your worldview. My particular worldview is that Senator Obama's supposedly thin national resume is more than offset by his accomplishments. He looks like a prophet right now when, in 2002 with President Bush having 90% national approval ratings, he gave this speech. He also has more than proven his executive ability in my mind. As for the lacks experience argument, I submit to you that Hillary's "35 years" of experience that she claims to have really look a bit thinner when you take away President Clinton's coattails. I'm not sure how her being First Lady for eight years, for example, makes her more ready to be president.

That's like saying ChiliDragon can do my job because, by some bizarre osmosis, she obtains all of my experience in my particular field of expertise based on sheer proximity to me. It just kind of floats over to her while we sleep together. That strikes me as a bit implausible. Hillary Spin #3: Obama doesn't have any solid plans. He's just pretty rhetoric. The ironic thing about this spin is that it is one that was made about her husband Bill Clinton when he was running for president in 1991. It is predicated upon a linked pair assumptions that many people make. 1. Smart people cannot be charismatic 2. Charismatic people cannot be smart To put it another way, the star quarterback can't also be the smartest guy in all of his cla.ss because it wouldn't be fair. If you do a little digging, you find that Senator Obama has actually laid out his plans in mind numbingly boring and excruciating detail. The issue is that a lot of his speeches tend to be heavy on the "meta" ideas of change, hope and unity and don't get too bogged down in the details of what happens when the other side disagrees with his policy ideas. That's actually what makes him a good speaker. If he was to trot out a laundry list of proposals and dollar figures then he wouldn't be particularly interesting to listen to. People would call him Senator Kerry version 2.0: smart, but boring as all hell. There is no inherent contradiction between being smart and good looking/charismatic. In fact, that's a good description of President Bill Clinton. Hillary Spin #4: Caucus states are undemocratic and therefore don't really count. For my international readers, a "caucus" is not, as it sounds, a Roman phallus of some kind but rather an archaic voting process wherein you go to your designated voting area and publicly and openly declare your preference for a particular candidate. After the "first vote", campaigns are given a half hour to try and persuade supporters of another candidate to come over and join, or "caucus", with their candidate.

After that there is a second vote. Any candidate who does not get a minimum 15% of the votes in the second vote is considered "non-viable" and their supporters are ignored when it comes to assigning delegate voters. Unlike in a regular primary where you can show up, cast your vote, and leave, a caucus more or less requires a couple of hours of time commitment. It is argued that this is undemocratic because it disenfranchises voters who have to work, cannot make the limited caucus time, or don't feel comfortable expressing a preference with everyone and their grandmother watching them do it. Remember what I said about spin? Well, like most good spin, this contains an element of truth. All of these things are true. Caucuses are inherently less democratic than other forms of Democracy. For example, older people find going to caucuses difficult because, well, they're old! Transporting themselves and then waiting in line in cold weather isn't an old person preferred activity.

Senator Obama tends to do very well in caucus states because his support is made up of, largely, very enthusiastic, motivated voting demographics with some time on their hands. For instance, college students are one of his largest voter blocs. So are people who are economically well off. He also does well because he has organized heavily in conservative, or "red", states like Idaho which Democrats usually ignore completely because they are considered unwinnable in the general election. But here is why this qualifies as spin: this is the same electoral process that has been in place for, literally, centuries in the U.S. in certain states. Senator Clinton's husband was elected to be the Democratic nominee with this system in place. To say that is unfair now, after she has lost numerous primaries, is disingenuous. Furthermore, most successful campaigns anticipate difficulties in caucus states and put in a support system on the ground to account for it. For example, they offer a phone number to call where people without transportation can call in and obtain a campaign sponsored car ride to the caucus location. Obama spin: A ChiliDragon written section. A. Hillary is the establishment. She is the bad people in Washington. Based on: 1. She's been in the senate longer than Obama has. 2. She's married to a former president (after he publicly cheated on her!) 3. Uses her husband's experience and connections, and popularity in some states, as basis for her campaign 4. Because of all the above, Hillary will turn out to be just as bad as what we have in the White House right now, or at the very least as bad as Dick Cheney B. Establishment in Washington = BAD Based on: 1. They took us to war in Iraq and have kept us there ever since 2. They cut taxes only for their rich friends 3. Lobbyists have more say than you, the voter Conveniently ignores: Obama will have to work with this establishment if he becomes President. He knows it, but seems to go to great pains to avoid reminding his supporters of this fact. With thanks to ChiliDragon for contributing and Monco59 for assisting me in locating the source of an early HTML problem, I'm going to cut off this blog here since I'm rapidly approaching the word limit. Feel free to submit other Obama spin if you choose in the comments.