I've often lamented, right here on TAPPED, the degree to which campaigns ignore the stuff government actually does (so-called policy) and obsess over the "character" of candidates, focusing on questions like which one is the bigger liar or who loves America more. These things are largely irrelevant -- whether someone likes a little eye of newt in their stew doesn't tell you whether they'll be a good legislator or not. But they're not completely irrelevant -- we do want to know whether candidates are criminals, or incompetent, or mistreat their employees, and that sort of thing. So I'm a bit conflicted about the travails of Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller : Republican Senate nominee Joe Miller said Monday he will not answer any more questions about his personal background for the rest of the campaign. ... He has said the Alaska media is reporting what he considers irrelevant issues, such as his past government benefits. That includes coverage of the fact he and his wife obtained...

When someone is propagating falsehoods about a matter of public debate, someone else will often say, "You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts." In other words, we can only have a reasonable debate if we agree on what the facts are. We may disagree about which facts are more important than others, but if you believe, say, that the Affordable Care Act establishes "death panels" before which seniors and the disabled have to beg for their lives, and I assert that the act does no such thing, we won't be able to have a fruitful discussion about whether the ACA is a good thing until we can get past the factual disagreement. Without a common set of facts, we can't come to conclusions, because all we will do is argue about what's true. This is a long-standing problem in politics, American and otherwise. When we look, however, at the most widespread factual inaccuracies that pervade politics today, there is one common thread: Almost all of them redound to the benefit of the...