Ronald reagan facts are stupid things

John Adams, our second president, famously said: "Facts are stubborn things." In a 1988 slip of the tongue, Ronald Reagan said: "Facts are stupid things." For the Bush administration, the slip of the tongue has been going on for seven years.

Here's the latest from the fact-free zone. Last month, when denying California the right to set its own standards for global warming pollution from new cars and SUVs (see my previous post), Bush's EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson, claimed California's global warming standards are weaker than the fuel economy standard in the newly enacted energy bill.

In his December 19th get-lost letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Johnson wrote: "I strongly support this national approach to this national challenge which establishes an aggressive standard of 35 miles per gallon for all 50 states, as opposed to 33.8 miles per gallon in California and a patchwork of other states."

Huh? If California's standards are weaker, then why are the car compan

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Stupid facts

Ronald Reagan once famously said "Facts are dum things."

He meant to säga "facts are stubborn things," but nobody minded because, after all, he was Ronald Reagan. Americans cared more about how he said things - warmly, sincerely, earnestly - than what he actually said.

But, listen, I'm thinking that it's actually starting to matter more what you say in politics than how you say it.

All of the advance conservative buzz about Fred Thompson being the second coming of Ronald Reagan began to vända into mush as soon as he jumped into the race the other day and said ... well ... mush.

Fred Thompson is no Ronald Reagan. Or maybe we're just not as tolerant or forgiving of artful dodging and sly dissimilations as we used to be.

Dare we hope that we are entering an age when stubborn facts matter more than stupid words? Has sincerity, a warm smile and a hail-fellow-well met demeanor run its course?

It should, you know. We've been led down more than one garden path bygd affabl

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Political Notes: Facts are stupid things

Facts are stupid things.

That's what Ronald Reagan said at the 1988 Republican National Convention.

Whether stupid or stubborn - stubborn is what Reagan meant to say - facts also can be annoying.

Particularly when they contradict what you say is going to happen.

So it was last week after I peered at an apparently cracked crystal ball for what lay ahead in the presidential race.

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Such as it was, my focus was on the upcoming debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, held on Monday.

I said Romney again would tee off on the president's handling of the recent terrorist assault on the U.S. embassy in Libya.

And that he had been seen as winning the debate to stop Obama from cruising to a narrow victory, more or less on auto-pilot.

Obama would do so, I said, unless something - mostly likely the debate - shook loose his grip on key "battleground" states such as Ohio and Iowa.

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