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There's media spin, and then there are direct quotes from the President. That's my whole point. Trump's out there lying about trivial stuff, not just the big stuff, and directly rather than let a media machine handle the lifting. It may seem like a distinction without a difference to you, but it is important. (And as I noted, it's quite possible that Trump is or has lied about some big scandal that isn't yet known, we as always must wait for history to take its course before the judgements can start to come out with certainty on that front)
Candidates promise stuff they want to do. I take it in the spirit they are said. If Trump says he wants to end the Ukraine war, and has a plan to do so... does he make an effort to do so? I do happen to think he made an effort, even if it was a stupid and doomed one. So, not a lie! I do think he was exaggerating about doing so on Day 1 - that's obviously almost literally impossible for a president to do, so maybe it falls under the deception umbrella but I wouldn't call it a lie as such. More generally I don't consider the 100-day traditional promises to be binding, only that an attempt is made. That's the whole point of being a candidate, to outline where you want the country to go, and what you hope to deliver. Everyone in the process knows that it's better to overpromise and underdeliver than underpromising and overdelivering, right? Voters even expect it. In that sense, though I absolutely hate to be in the shoes defending PolitiFact, a 2008-era assessment of truth is more about whether a claim accurately reflects or summarizes the policy as portrayed by the source (so "true" is broadly correct), not about whether it is practical or not - though this limitation, as we both know, was flagrantly ignored by various fact-checking sites increasingly often as time has gone on. Of which I've always disapproved.
Once you're president, things change. In Obama's case, much of the first year of his presidency he spent talking about how he really wanted the health care bill to be bipartisan, to get some Republican support, and so on which he was very loud about. He ended up being wrong about that, but it frames his entire effort! Self-evidently a health care effort that is hoped to be bipartisan will involve compromises short of the partisan ideal. I think it's reasonable to expect that main pillars would stay the same and not be subject to compromise, but even that doesn't always tend to be the case when it comes to the nuts and bolts of legislation-making. Also, Obama didn't exactly hide that he approved, in terms of general strategy, of taking the 'best' ideas and combining them regardless of provenance (that's a classically technocratic view), though for PR reasons this is usually not smart to emphasize.
When Trump lies in a debate about immigrants eating the pets of their neighbors, yeah it's bad, but it doesn't do structural damage because he's communicating a vibe and not actually responsible for policy and enforcement. When Trump as president says the BLS commissioner is rigging data, we assume he has some kind of internal line of proof to suggest such; when it turns out he doesn't even have a scrap, it does structural damage. Again, the presidential asymmetry of information access - and control! - obligates the president to a higher degree of truthfulness. Usually, for example, more banal attempts at lower-grade deception would take the form of carefully worded non-answers by the press secretary. The press secretary is, in most cases, being narrowly truthful, but selective with such. Yet Trump's press secretaries and himself both seem to tell bald-faced lies with very little compunction. What I'm trying to get you to see is that my point is about the direct wording, it matters. What happens in the spin between a press conference and the news reporting on it can be worrisome, but it's of a different scale and degree than the press conference stuff itself.
Not to harp on the BLS example too much, but it's just such a clear-cut case, you can watch the conference I'm talking about here. Miller is saying how the last decade has seen massive overall aggregate errors, and as he's about to clarify that he doesn't mean to insinuate anything... At 1:35 Trump jumps in and states directly: "if it was an error that would be one thing, but I don't think it was an error, I think they did it purposefully". Miller, who has a more traditional respect for the truth when in positions of power, immediately does damage control and hedges "whether that - you may well be right - but even if it wasn't purposefully, it's incompetent". MILLER is doing things structurally safe - oh look, she was in charge during so many errors, she should have been better, that's why we're firing her. TRUMP is doing the structural damage. He tweeted that she rigged stuff, and he's digging in. He's in constant campaign mode with the ethics to match. He's not being an adult and not being responsible, and it's bad for everyone, even future Republican presidents.
In terms of Obama specifics, I'd be interested in details, yeah. I googled a little bit, one top result was this clip where an Obama speechwriter almost exactly says what I just said - that in retrospect the claim wasn't examined closely enough... but it was never, he emphasizes, viewed as being untrue by the team. This is at odds with your claim. Are you confusing it with his 2009 speech to the AMA, when he was already president? Maybe my google-fu is just failing me, but I can't find corroboration of your claim, despite its specificity.
If you want to accuse Obama of a campaign lie, the better one might be his initial rejection of an individual mandate, only for it to eventually make it into the bill. Although, if my memory is correct, Obama was pretty reluctant to do so. For example here is one reference to this process - partly forced by CBO policy, and partly by being confronted by the raw economics. How much credit do we allow for mind-changing? Reasonable people may disagree there. But if Obama portrayed himself as a mind-changing president who is open to ideas from across the aisle and from many sources, it seems in character. I'm on record here as opining that we should, as voters, more heavily weight the character and judgement of candidates, and put less on particular pet policies. Policies can reflect character, but the reality is we vote for a person, not a party, at the end of the day, who we trust implicitly to handle diverse situations as they may arise.
(With all that said, I was late in high school when Obama was elected, and only paid medium attention to the Obama-Romney campaign, so while I believe I'm correct in this portrayal I may be wrong in some particulars)
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