Lies, damned lies, and political campaigns ...

Paul Krugman has a scathing article criticizing the lies being pandered by the McCain campaign. I say lies because these are so egregiously misleading that its hard to know how you can even get around to justify them. McCain appears to have decided a Willie Horton tactic is best.

To give some context, this is the famous Willie Horton ad that was used against Michael Dukakis by then Vice President Bush to extraordinary effect, shifting the polls in Bush's favor:



The facts in this ad were not incorrect. The issue was the ad made it seem as if Dukakis had caused the death of these people, which was misleading. These tactics had been used before and since, but in many cases, such as in the case of McCain's claims around Obama raising taxes, you needed a very nuanced understanding of the issues to understand why McCain is not right.

Well, the McCain camp decided to set a new low standard in Washington. They have taken this one step further. Here's the ad that McCain released:



The problem is that the bill Obama voted for actually was intended to teach children to protect themselves against sexual offenders, i.e. not "sex education" as the ad is suggesting.

The condemnation against McCain has been immediate and almost universal outside the core Republican circles. However, he got himself a lot of free airtime and a lot of people will believe this lie, no matter how many times its corrected.

McCain himself claims the ad was factual. This article covers clips from The View, where he got grilled on this. McCain uses his mock outrage about the "lipstick on a pig" comment to deflect answering the question.

To counterattack, the Obama camp has released a so-called "tough" new ad, which frankly is very tepid, non controversial and ineffective by comparison:



The media is pretending as if these ads are in the same league, but there is just no comparison.

The most effective response has come, not from the campaign but from Planned Parenthood. Here's the ad they came up with:



Now if the Obama camp were the GOP, this is the ad they'd be running against McCain, and McCain would lose. We, with values, must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous attacks from those who shout about having values but have none. Let us see if Obama chooses the Presidency at the cost of his values. His meeting with Clinton yesterday suggests he may be seeking a middle ground.