McCain's "Pants on Fire" Lies Compared to Obama's Truth-Stretching

Farhad Manjoo tells us what we pretty much already know: Obama is running a much more honest campaign than McCain.

Since July, John McCain and his campaign have made 11 political claims that are barely true, eight that are categorically false, and three that you'd have to call pants-on-fire lies—a total of 22 clearly deceptive statements (many of them made repeatedly in ads and stump speeches). Barack Obama and Joe Biden, meanwhile, have put out eight bare truths , four untruths, and zero pants-on-fire lies—12 false claims. These stats and categories come from PolitiFact, but the story looks pretty much the same if you count up fabrications documented by FactCheck.org or the Washington Post's Fact Checker, the other truth-squad operations working the race: During the past two and a half months, McCain has lied more often and more outrageously than Obama.

Unfortunately, Manjoo goes on to assert that Obama needs to start lying more, something with which I categorically disagree.