I woke up this morning, and checked some "news" sites like I usually do. I put "news" sites in quotes because I visited the Politico* - a gossip rag whose ace "reporter" Jonathan Martin told me this:
In the wide-ranging [Meet the Press] appearance, Obama once again gave strong indications that he's backing off his stance on two key campaign pledges - whether to repeal President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich, and his call for bringing U.S. combat troops home from Iraq in 16 months.
I was pretty stunned at this, so I went to the tape and watched President-elect Obama on Meet the Press. And what do you know, he didn't "give strong indications that he's backing off" his income tax or Iraq pledges. He did nothing of the kind.
On taxes, Obama said, "My economic team right now is examining -- do we repeal that through legislation [or] do we let it lapse so that, when the Bush tax cuts expire, they're not renewed when it comes to wealthiest Americans?" In other words, he didn't say he was considering not repealing the tax cuts, he said he was considering how to repeal them - whether to support repealing them now, or whether to support them being automatically repealed by statute in two years. But the support for repeal is a foregone conclusion.
Likewise, on Iraq, Obama reiterated that it his top priority to withdraw troops from Iraq "as quickly as we can." Sure, he didn't explicitly say the phrase "16 months" - but in what way is a pledge to withdraw troops "as quickly as we can" a "strong indication" that he will withdraw troops in more time than 16 months? If anything, Obama's actually suggesting he may bring troops home sooner (I don't think he will, but my point is that if you can draw any conclusion from his statement, it is that, and not that he's "backing off" his 16 month timeline).
Look, Obama has clearly backed off his campaign promise for a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies. I also think that his transition team has offered conflicting signals on whether the new administration's timing for its push to repeal Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Those are concrete, verifiable, undebatable facts, and he deserves to be asked about them. I also think it's fair to criticize Obama for not moving to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy right when he enters office.
However, Jonathan Martin claiming in a straight news story that Obama's Meet the Press interview "gave strong indications that he's backing off" his overall promise to support the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and withdraw troops from Iraq in 16 months is an outrageous lie - a made up fiction by a self-serving "reporter" looking to get his story on the front page of Drudge. Believe me, if Obama had done that, I'd be among the first to flag it (and if Obama in the future does, in fact, back off those promises, we should all call him out on it).
But that's not what he did on Meet the Press. The only thing that happened this morning is that an arrogant "reporter" manufactured a story. Remember, it was only a few years ago that people like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass became national embarrassments for that kind of behavior - now it seems that's what passes for the norm in "political journalism."
* I'm not linking to the story because the entire reason the Politico made up this outrageous lie is to get people to link to the story and build up traffic which it then uses to attract ad revenue. If you want to see the story go to the Politico.