Truth serum

I know this happens a lot, but there seems to be an inordinate amount of lying in this year’s election, from the grassroots level on up. And this may just be my viewpoint, since I’m a known liberal, but it seems that there have been many more untruthful smears against Barack Obama than against John McCain, and many more personal attacks against him.

But on that, it doesn’t really matter what I think because that’s not the subject of this column. The important thing is that the Obama campaign believes its candidate’s record and character are being distorted, and it is trying to take action, like any responsible campaign would. The way they’ve done it, though, has caused issues – though it honestly shouldn’t have.

In Missouri, the campaign has assembled a “truth squad,” a fairly common political entity in the time of the chain e-mail, which has the mission of countering opposing spin on a candidate by disseminating the facts (or, when appropriate, the campaign’s own spin).

In the press release, though, a badly worded passage said that “the Missouri Truth Squad will be anchored by United States Senator Claire McCaskill and will include other elected officials and members of the Missouri law enforcement from throughout the state.”

In reality, this refers to elected officials acting outside of their official capacities. However, on Sept. 23, a St. Louis TV station aired a story essentially suggesting that the Obama campaign was assembling a goon squad of sorts to arrest and detain people who said things the Obama campaign didn’t like.

And people actually believed this. The story started to fade away until the state’s governor, Matt Blunt, issued an odd rant on his taxpayer-funded state Web site. In part, he claimed that “the only conceivable purpose ... is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights [sic], to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism ... about the election.”

The essay was later issued as a press release by the Republican National Committee.

Granted, the original statement was worded a little bit too strongly. But really?
I can think of another conceivable purpose for the truth squad right now. Besides stifling debate, it probably actually exists to counter the claim that Blunt himself makes in the post that Obama wants to raise taxes.

Misrepresenting Obama’s truth squad is ironic for two reasons. First of all, Obama’s truth squad is not unique. He’s used them in the primary campaign, and nobody has yet been executed for voting against him.

Second of all, John McCain himself has created two such squads since becoming the presumptive nominee several months ago. Again, no McCain rivals have found themselves in Siberian prison camps.

All of this just has the feel of a desperate attempt by Blunt to get noticed on the national stage and by the RNC to staunch the polling blood flow after the stock market crash. And it’s something that the supposedly honorable McCain should be above.