In life, as in politics, facts are not the whole truth

If there was a high point in the reputation and significance of fact checkers, wonks and poll crunchers it came during the 2012 US presidential campaign. It was the election where former president Bill Clinton held court at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Miami for just under an hour. Such was the avalanche of statistics that night that fact-check site Politifact called it ‘Our Clinton Nightmare’, bemoaning the ‘effort required to run down his many statistics and factual claims, producing little for us to write about’.¹

The numbers just rolled off Clinton’s tongue—4.5 million private sector jobs, 500,000 manufacturing jobs, 250,000 more people working in the auto industry, 3 million young people between 19 and 25 insured for the first time, health care costs rising at under 4 per cent. ‘Look,’ he said to the faithful, ‘here’s what really happened. You be the judge. Here’s what really happened.’²