Obama's Occasional Distortions Help Sink Case Against McCain's Lies

I took some heat around here for harping on Obama's distortion of McCain's "hundred years" claim. What McCain said was that it'd be acceptable to stay in Iraq for a hundred more years if the violence went away and the situation became like, say, that in South Korea. What the Obama camp repeated ad nauseam, however, was, roughly: McCain thinks it's o.k. if we're in Iraq for a hundred more years. There's a huge difference between these claims, as the crucial qualification is left off. Obama's gloss on McCain's claim was a clear and significant distortion. McCain's claim was an evocative way of saying: it's more important to focus on how dangerous it is to be there than it is to focus on how long we're there. There are obvious grounds for disagreement, of course--but they require no distortion of McCain's claim. Some have said that the point was that McCain took any type of presence in Iraq too lightly, or that his belief that a South Korea-type situation was a real possibility was delusional. Perhaps Obama's claim was not an outright lie, but it was on a continuum with outright lies, and it was on the wrong end of the continuum. It was a distortion, and he shouldn't have said it even once, much less hundreds of times.

Now, the main point here is the moral one: one should not lie during elections. It displays contempt for democracy. Democracy is worthless if leaders and potential leaders are permitted to lead the electorate to act this way or that with false information.

But, on a prudential note, I also predicted, on the basis of past experience, that the following would happen: Obama would tell a smaller lie, McCain would tell a series of large ones, and then when Obama cried "foul," the response would be: they both do it, so they're equally to blame.

And that's exactly what is happening now.

Imagine the difference it would make if the Obama campaign had been scrupulously honest. Imagine the difference between headlines like "McCain, Obama Both Stretch Truth," and "Obama and McCain: Two Very Different Approaches to the Truth."

Now, you might say: given what we see, the press would make it "he said, she said" no matter what. There's a kernel of truth in this, but not a large enough one. The fact is: the press will suggest both parties are equally at fault so long as it's at all plausible. And that's why the only winning strategy here is to make it utterly implausible.

The relatively minor and few cases in which Obama has stretched the truth will help him not at all compared to the advantages he would now be reaping if he'd been scrupulously honest.

On the bright side, it might not be too late. Obama could willingly subject his claims and ads to review by, say, Factcheck.org. Again: since he's being fairly honest, and since McCain is lying like a rug, Obama has little to lose and much to gain.

This of course in no way means that Obama can't hit back hard against McCain's lies--there is no need to distort the truth in any way to do so. In fact, to make a move of the kind I envision would itself be a way of striking back, since McCain would never, could never, agree to have his claims subjected to a neutral, objective evaluation process.