While I am disgusted by the Romney campaign’s editing of the President’s speech in order to completely change the meaning of what he said in one of their ads (especially when I see how many people are buying it completely), I still have to unclench my teeth and acknowledge that both campaigns are manipulating the truth in order to persuade the public to buy what they’re selling.  I might want to quibble over how much distortion is being propagated by whom, but I am then forced to step back and ask the question:  Is dishonesty really quantifiable?  I mean, can it be possible for one lie to be considered lesser or greater than another?  Setting aside any hypothetical clichés (such as lying to save a family of Jews from the Nazis), I have difficulty answering “yes” to that question.  Is the Romney campaign’s complete misrepresentation of the president’s speech really any worse than the Obama campaign’s overstatements and omissions in their ad regarding Romney’s economic record while Governor of Massachusetts?

If you’ve clicked either of the hyperlinks in the first paragraph you were, hopefully, directed to a corresponding article at FactCheck.org.  This is currently one of my favorite sites.  Irrespective of where individual sympathies lie, the folks at FactCheck do not allow themselves the luxury of playing favorites.  Obama’s camp is just as likely to distort and mislead as Romney’s (check out this list of the site’s “Whoppers of 2012”).  Unfortunately, those of us who already know which party we’re voting with are too often ready to believe what we hear about the opposition because perhaps, in our minds, we just “wouldn’t put it past them.”

During the presidential campaign of 2008, an email was forwarded to me by one of my old elementary school teachers, with whom I am still in contact.  This email listed, point by point, all the attributes that candidate Obama shared with the Anti-Christ as described in the biblical book of Revelation.  My teacher included a note with the email saying that she found it “interesting.”  Hmm.  There was only one problem:  The bullet-pointed descriptions listed in the email were nowhere to be found in the book of Revelation.  Nowhere.  Now, clearly she was not an Obama fan—because she found painting him as the literal spawn of Lucifer to be only “interesting.”  It never occurred to her that it might be untrue and therefore outrageous, insulting, provocative, inflammatory or despicable.  But she, a faithful church-going believer (who must have had at least one translation of The Bible lying around somewhere), hadn’t bothered to check.  To her, it simply felt true.

I try very hard these days to not blindly believe—anything.  I am not a fan of Mitt Romney, but I am less concerned about what he says and does as I am with what his party stands for, and I believe I have read enough about that to have an informed opinion.  And while that opinion makes me yearn for the days when the worst thing a Democrat could imagine would be Barry Goldwater as president,  I still want to make sure that opinion does not cause me to become naïve about what mischief my own party is capable of.   I am not the most well-informed member of the electorate, by any stretch of one’s imagination, and while  I don’t have a lot of time to read what’s out there—FactCheck.org is a site I visit often.   It’s my “Honest Engine.”  I highly recommend it to everyone.