Obama's Work Claim

Summary
Obama's latest ad repeats an often-stated claim, saying he "worked his way through college and Harvard Law." We know Obama took out loans to get himself through school. But the campaign at first provided information on just two jobs Obama had in those years, and they were both in the summer

The ad also says he "passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Actually, the Illinois law was a required follow-up to the 1996 federal welfare reform law worked out by President Clinton and the Republican Congress. Welfare rolls did go down by nearly as much as the ad says, but Obama can't claim sole credit.

Update, July 25: Our original story said in the headline that Obama's campaign listed only two summer jobs. Now that a spokesman has provided additional information, we have updated this article accordingly. But it's still a stretch for Obama to say he "worked his way through college."

Analysis
Obama's new ad, "Dignity," is largely a 30-second version of his last one, "Country I Love." It, too, will be airing in 18 states, according to the presumptive Democratic nominee's campaign.

Working to Make It Work
The ad begins with the announcer telling us that Obama "worked his way through college and Harvard Law." Actually, Obama took out loans to get himself through college, as we heard in a 60-second ad his campaign began running last month. We don't know how much assistance his family provided.

But "worked his way" through college and law school? The only back-up the campaign provided for this claim was a quote from Obama's book "Dreams from My Father" having to do with a construction job he had one summer while he was in college, and an article mentioning his job as a summer associate one year at a big Chicago law firm. We asked campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor if Obama held jobs during the school year, or other summer jobs, but he said only, "He had the two jobs I told you about." Unless Obama had a good bit more employment than his spokesman was able to describe for us, it's a real stretch to claim he "worked his way" through school.

Update, July 25: Three weeks after we posted this story, the Obama campaign listed some additional jobs the candidate held during his college years. Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that Obama had three summer jobs Vietor didn't tell us about for our original article: one at a gift shop in Hawaii after his first year of college; another making sandwiches at a deli counter, also in Hawaii; and a third with a company that processed health records of police or firefighters. In addition, Vietor said, during one school year Obama worked as a telemarketer selling New York Times subscriptions over the phone. Without additional information, which we have asked for but which, so far, has not been provided by the campaign, we haven't been able to independently verify this information.

Had we known this at the time we wrote our story, we might have debated our conclusion about the ad's claim that Obama "worked his way through college and Harvard Law" more extensively. We have our doubts, though, that the first three positions did much more than help support Obama in the summer between school years; we don't know about the fourth.

We do note, though, that Obama released a new Spanish-language radio ad this week that puts it differently: