I keep fretting about that Republican strategist saying that the “bigger truth” – that Palin was “new” and “popular” – trumped the “smaller truths” (that she and McCain were lying). And the McCain campaign spokesman who defended their dubious attacks by saying, “We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.” The media filters would be those fussy “fact check” articles.
“I’m a terrible cynic, I think, because I just can’t get worked up,” writes Ross Douthat, an excellent conservative blogger at The Atlantic “Every successful politician and political movement has to master the art of below-the-belt, us-versus-them political engagement, because that’s how democratic politics works.”
Obviously I’m being too prim in my quaint view that dishonesty in campaigns actually matters a lot. Obviously I’m being unrealistic and ahistorical.
Still, I keep having a nagging feeling that I’ve seen this prohibition on lying somewhere — somewhere outside, the League of Woman Voters brochure. Oh yeah, that Charleton Heston movie!
Well, He saw fit to put lying in the Top Ten, He must have felt it was somewhat important. Why? I asked one of the wisest men I know, Rabbi David Wolpe, who by the way has a terrfic new atheism-battling book out called Why Faith Matters. His response:

The narrow interpretation of false witness is that it refers to legal proceedings, where there is an immediate, and often dire, consequence. The broader interpretation is that you ‘implant’ in someone else’s mind something false about a third person. Part of the potency of gossip is that it is very difficult to dislodge from memory, even if you learn it is untrue. I remember things about friends from high school that probably were never true, but they stick.
That is what makes negative campaigning so effective, and so pernicious. To lie (or even to phrase the truth in a deliberately misleading way, as in “I am quite sure my opponent never meant to deprive orphans of food” – thereby implying that he did deprive them) is clearly wrong. It takes a toll on the character of the candidate, but also on us. We are all sullied in the duplicities of those who would represent us

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