Funny, isn't it, that a guy as traditional as John McCain is essentially staking his career on the very postmodern proposition that no one can really determine what the truth is? Farhad Manjoo, like too many journalists, discusses the idea as an observer of a rather interesting ploy, revealing, in the process, more about himself than about the race:
This is exactly what's so puzzling about Obama's strategy -- why is he paying any attention to the fact-checkers? So far, McCain has seen little blowback from lying. Polls show that he's perceived as more "honest and trustworthy" than Obama and that the public believes his claim that Obama would raise taxes on the middle class. ...
The misstatements of 2004 suggest a category of lies that Obama could get away with -- ones that the public is already primed to believe about McCain. ...
It's hilarious, effective, and a complete lie. Obama's advisers should be pushing him to approve that message.
What the story does not mention is that lying is morally wrong. We tolerate lies in society and politics all the time; It's considered dreadfully unfashionable and quite naive to do otherwise. But we also recognize that lying ought to be restricted and politicians ought to stop repeating a lie if they get caught. McCain hasn't given in to these polite conventions and, now that the media is beginning to notice and question his statements, I think we'll see a change in those poll numbers that Manjoo references.
Manjoo has written a book, "True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society," which I have not read, but as far as I can tell in it he argues that society should simply learn to live with the fact that we don't have facts anymore. This may be an accurate description of the kind of society we construct in news-cycles and internet memes, but real government has to confront the facticity of the world. Hurricanes are real. Wars are real. Sickness and death are real. The collision of George W. Bush's post-fact society with the actual problems that confront us has resulted in the last eight years of failed government.
Manjoo's piece purports to ask, "Why isn't Obama stretching the truth more often?" Perhaps because he's better than that, and our society ought to be, too.
--Tim Fernholz
