Friday, September 19, 2008

Dishonest Ads From Obama?

Haven't had time to investigate this, but Sullivan says that several of Obama's new ads are dishonest. Here, here, here.

Anybody know whether Sully's right here?

The overriding issue here is, of course, the moral one...but this would be stupid on a merely strategic level. As I've said many times before, the only way to win this kind of battle is to be scrupulously honest. The press will only call out your opponent if the truth gap is a chasm. If the "symmetry of sin" claim is even vaguely plausible, it will become the conventional wisdom.

As I've said before: hit back hard, but do not lie.

Why is this so hard?

1 Comments:

Blogger Jim Bales said...

On the micro level, I note:

Media Matters puts to rest the claim by Michael Scherer that Obama lies by claiming McCain wants to privatize social security.

Scherer posts:
But it is not true that McCain is running for president on a platform of turning Social Security over to Wall Street.

Here is what his campaign says: "John McCain supports supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts...


"Personal accounts" means investing one's social security taxes in the markets. That qualifies, to my mind, as "turning Social Security over to Wall Street", at least in part. (I've not tracked down the others, yet.)


On the macro level, it is clear that the media will not police this campaign. They were muted when McCain unleashed a stream of deceitful ads (i.e, they did not repeately print large headlines stating "McCain is a Liar"). Instead, they decided to overlook blatant lies by McCain and Palin. Having acquiesced to Rovian tactics, they act in bad faith if they now try to change the rules. More "IOKIYAR" is not acceptable.

3:08 PM  

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