Some creative spin in favor of President Barack Obama from Chuck Todd on Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News. Recounting the results of a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll which puts Obama ahead of Mitt Romney by 47 to 44 percent, Todd declared Obama’s “strongest positive was a surprise, ‘health care,’” though it actually was the third-most common positive reply to the question: “What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Barack Obama as President?”
Citing Obama’s negatives, Todd relayed how they “include the ‘economy’ and ‘unemployment’” – skipping over the second most-common reply – “lack of experience/incompetent” – and how more listed ObamaCare as a negative than a positive.
The on-screen graphic, however, which showed an array of the most-common positive and negative descriptions of Obama, prominently displayed “incompetent.”
Question 18 in the PDF of the poll results (on msnbc.com, on wsj.com) provides a list of the positive and negative characteristics offered by those polled. (Image of this portion of the PDF)
Todd’s deputy, Mark Murray, in a “First Read” post, accurately relayed the findings:
For Obama, 52 percent of the open-ended answers for him were negative: economy (15 percent), lack of experience/incompetent (9 percent), Obamacare (8 percent), high unemployment (6 percent) and broken promises (6 percent).
Another 44 percent were positive: good leader/doing good job (10 percent), for the people (6 percent), health-care reform (5 percent) and fair/honest (5 percent).
Here’s how Todd, after correctly reporting the traits for Romney, mangled them for Obama in his story on the Tuesday, June 26 NBC Nightly News:
…To get a better understanding of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, we asked voters to name the first words that came to their mind about each candidate. For Mitt Romney, his strengths: “Good businessman,” “change,” “conservative.” His negatives: Personal traits like “wealthy,” “out of touch.”
For the President, his strongest positive was a surprise, “health care,” also “good leader.” But his big negative continues to include the “economy” and “unemployment.”…