For birthday of president No. 1, a look No. 44

By Becky Bowers
Published on Sunday, February 19th, 2012 at 12:00 p.m.

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President George Washington didn't have to face the Truth-O-Meter. [Papers of George Washington, University of Virginia]

In honor of Washington’s Birthday, we’re throwing the spotlight on our current leader’s record for truth-telling.

President Barack Obama, PolitiFact's most fact-checked politician, has faced the Truth-O-Meter more than 340 times since our first Obama item in June 2007.

He’s earned ratings of True or Mostly True 46 percent of the time — and 71 percent of his ratings have been Half True or better.

At the other end of the spectrum, he’s racked up 42 Mostly False and 52 False ratings — and five Pants on Fires:

• "Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich all say they would cut foreign aid to Israel — and every other country — to zero."

• "What I have done -- and this is unprecedented ... is I've said to each agency ... 'look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don't make sense, let's get rid of them.'"

• "If you actually took the number of Muslims [sic] Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

• "And 100 percent, John (McCain), of your ads . . . 100 percent of them have been negative."

• Obama ad contends that John McCain endorses Rush Limbaugh's comments about immigration.

Now, if only that story about George Washington and the cherry tree ("I can't tell a lie!") were true.