The video editors and script writers who produced that advertisement, Romney for President, which paid for it, and the campaign staffers that approved it are all complicit in willful dishonesty and manipulation. They transgressed against the truth. They broke one of the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." If any are practicing Catholics they have a religious obligation to confess their sin through the sacrament of reconciliation. If any are parents they've done their children a disservice by giving them the impression that the ends justify the means, and insofar as their friends or acquaintances think there is something dishonorable about being in the profession of politics, it is because of actions like producing that commercial, an indelible part of their portfolio for which they should feel shame.

They are, of course, hardly unique in their mendacity. Throughout the profession, and especially at its highest levels, the near consensus is that misleading voters about the truth is an acceptable part of campaigning. It is often difficult to assess which of two candidates competing in a campaign is guilty of lying more egregiously through his words and the words of his or her surrogates. Certainly President Obama has lied on many occasions in his political career. I've yet to see a rigorous item arguing that either candidate has lied more in this campaign, though I've seen a lot of people make assertions about who has lied more based on their impressions.

I have no idea if my own impressions would stand up under scrutiny so I won't share them.

Dishonesty in politics is too big a subject to resolve in this item. What can be gleaned from it is that a particular Mitt Romney ad released recently is dishonest in a way that reflects poorly on the characters of those involved in it; that it's prudent to be very skeptical of any campaign advertisement that Romney produces; and that, whether he is presently running a campaign more or less dishonest than Romney, it is also prudent to be very skeptical of any campaign advertisement Team Obama produces. Both candidates, and people working for both of them, have been complicit in willfully misleading you in the past. To win, both campaigns would readily lie in the future.

Rather than try to assess which campaign is more dishonest, best to heavily discount all statements the candidates make about one another; seek out accurate information from more trustworthy sources; and use it to determine which candidate is most likely to govern best in your view. If enough people behaved that way the incentive for politicians to lie would be diminished.

So would the effect of lies, which will never entirely disappear.

* * *



Dishonest campaign ads are never covered in the way that I just wrote about the one from Team Romney. But I rather like the approach, and suspect that before long I'll be able to give Team Obama a similar treatment. It was inspired by press critic Jay Rosen and a weekend item he published titled, "Everything That's Wrong With Political Journalism In One Washington Post Item."