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There are many losers when the 'spin' wins

The late, great Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."

His adage has become a familiar cliché around Washington, but it took on new meaning after the House Intelligence Committee issued a unanimous, bipartisan report about the attack in the Libyan city of Benghazi that killed four Americans in September 2012.

The report forcefully dispelled the conspiracy theories that continue to swirl about the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi affair. No matter. The Conspiracy Crowd simply refused to accept the facts.

Sen. Lindsay Graham denounced the report in an interview with CNN. Speaker John Boehner also turned his back on the Intelligence Committee - headed by fellow Republican Mike Rogers - and reappointed yet another panel to produce yet another report on the same events.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, got it exactly right when he said of the critics: "The only real objection we're hearing is that it contradicts a myth."

But in today's capital, myth is often king, especially if it serves a cynical and selfish purpose. The Conspiracy Crowd keeps Benghazi alive because it stirs up their conservative base, boosts donations, fuels ratings for conservative media outlets and potentially damages the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state during the attack.

"For some, no amount of factual documentation is going to change their Fox-driven conclusion," Schiff told The Washington Post. Even some Republicans flinched at their party's obsession with Benghazi. "I thought for a long time we ought to move beyond that," Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

They don't "move beyond" Benghazi, however, because they don't want to. They prefer a world of perpetual partisan warfare rooted in the idea that there's no such thing as "factual documentation," or an independent reality that both sides can agree on.

Only reality can serve as a basis for reasonable decision-making. If you cannot agree on the facts of a problem, how can you agree on a solution?

Benghazi is a perfect example of how myth masters reality. The Intelligence Committee said it "spent thousands of hours asking questions, poring over documents, reviewing intelligence assessments, reading cable and emails." They held 20 hearings and other events and "conducted detailed interviews with senior intelligence officials ... as well as eight security personnel on the ground in Benghazi that night."

The panel did fault the administration on two points, and for good reason: The security at the American compound in Benghazi was woefully inadequate; and the administration's initial explanation of what actually happened that night contained serious inaccuracies.

But these were honest mistakes, not malign deceptions, said the panel. They found no evidence, for example, to back up charges from the Conspiracy Crowd that the State Department had ordered security forces to "stand down" and abandon the embattled Americans. Nor did they uncover any attempt by the White House to cover up what really happened.

But too often these days, the mythmakers prevail. And conservatives are not the only culprits.

Take the example of foreign trade. Organized labor, a key Democratic ally, adamantly opposes further deals and perpetuates the falsehood that expanded trade is bad for the American economy. Writing in Politico, Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, boasted that "by a nearly 4-to-1 margin, American voters say that free-trade agreements between the U.S. and other countries cost jobs instead of creating jobs."

Those voters are wrong, but if they believe the myth, it's because labor is feeding it to them and playing on their fears. According to the U.S. Trade Representative, America is the world's largest trading nation and exported nearly $2.3 trillion worth of goods and services in 2013. Foreign commerce supported 11.3 million American jobs, including one out of every four in the manufacturing sector. Export-oriented jobs pay 13 to 18 percent more than the national average. And robust trade helps everybody by "raising living standards and helping Americans provide for their families with affordable goods and services."

It's certainly true that some industries are threatened by foreign competition, and some workers and communities suffer significant hardships. But on balance, the "factual documentation" is indisputable. As a recent report from the European Union put it, "Free trade is more important than ever for economic growth and job creation."

But whether the issue is terrorism in Benghazi or trade in Baltimore, propaganda often overpowers reality.

Facts fail. Spin wins.

Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.

© 2013, Universal Uclick

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