I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a liar as President. I’m not talking about the kind of lies that are periodically unavoidable in leadership and governance, as much as we would like to pretend they are not. I’m talking about “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” type of lies, intentional falsehoods designed to deceive the public for  political advantage with no benefit to the nation or its occupants whatsoever. Unfortunately, we are about to elect a liar as President, because lying in political campaign ads, and particularly negative ads, is sunk deep into the system like an inoperable brain tumor. It is fair to say that every President since George Washington has done it, and thus the public accepts it, and the news media shrugs it off.

The harm this tradition does to the culture is incalculable. Among the side-effects is that Americans no longer know what a lie is anymore. Recently the Washington Post gave the Obama campaign “four Pinocchios,” its darkest rating, for an ad stating that Mitt Romney was “a corporate raider” and that he “shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” The campaign didn’t blink, and Obama mouthpiece David Axelrod defended the ad in TV appearances. It’s not a lie: it’s a debate over “terminology.” The ad is spin, it’s an opinion, it’s an exaggeration, it’s true “in spirit,” it’s “accurate.”. The ad, as the Post and almost very other reviewer not on the Obama payroll has determined, is in fact false. By no accepted definition was Romney ever a “corporate raider” (but it sounds sinister, which is the point), nor did he “ship jobs” to foreign countries. His company invested in foreign corporations which prospered and hired local workers; that’s not sending America jobs overseas. Never mind, partisans say: Romney’s ads will be just as misleading—and this is surely true— so its OK.

And we elect liars as Presidents.

Note: I began this post intending to write about yet another Obama ad, which caused me to spit out my morning muffin. This was the ad attacking Romney’s positions on Planned Parenthood and abortion, and what I thought I heard and saw was the statement “Romney would outlaw abortion.”  President Romney, as any student of civics knows, couldn’t outlaw abortion. For abortion to be outlawed, the Supreme Court would have to overturn a major decision of long-standing that has the full power of precedent, and that is both rare and unlikely. Then both Houses of Congress would have to pass a law. The President, no matter what he believes, doesn’t have the power to do anything about abortion, other than to sign a bill the people’s representatives have determined is in the nation’s best interests. Romney might want to see abortion outlawed; he might support the outlawing of abortion; he might sign a theoretical bill that at this point couldn’t be passed because it would be unconstitutional, but the statement that he “would” outlaw abortion is false on two levels. The President doesn’t make laws, and thus can’t “outlaw” anything, and the state of current  law is such that abortion, at this moment, which is when the ad is running, can’t be outlawed at all. The ad, I thought, both intentionally misinformed the public about how our system works, and claimed that Romney would do something that he almost certainly couldn’t.

Then I tracked down the ad and watched it again. Oh, it’s slimy, all right. The ad plays such deceptive tricks as having the on-screen graphics suggest things that are a step beyond what the voice-over is saying. It includes an outright misrepresentation when it states that “Romney backed a law that outlaws all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.” Factcheck.org, the only one of the ubiquitous “fact check” features that is truly bi-partisan (because it is operated by a non-profit foundation, not a newspaper) pointed out that Romney couldn’t have backed such “a law” because there never was one: he was once asked if he would sign a hypothetical law passed by Congress,after the hypothetical Supreme Court used a hypothetical case to, hypothetically, overturn Roe. Still, this clever wording permits the same weasel defenses employed regarding the “corporate raider” ad.

And the ad didn’t say what I thought it did. I wonder, however, how many potential voters, half-listening and watching over their morning muffins, hear what I thought I heard, but neither spit out their muffins nor checked the ad again. Unless the candidates show that they want to make certain that their ads are accurate and truthful so listeners aren’t misled and misinformed, I am going to hold them responsible for every mistaken impression they convey, whether it is the exact one that was planted there or not.

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Sources:

• Washington Post
• FactCheck.org