But the bigger reason is that no one -- not the media, not the campaign professionals, not the voters -- cares enough about lying. To some extent, they even respect a well-told lie as evidence of professionalism. If a candidate complains too much about an opponent's lies, he or she starts being regarded as a bad sport, a whiner. Stoic silence doesn't work either. People start asking why you don't "fight back." Pretty soon, the victim of the lies starts getting blamed. C'mon: this isn't paddycakes; politics ain't beanball; and so on. This happened to Al Gore in 2000 and to John Kerry in 2004. And it's already starting to happen to Barack Obama this year.This is basically it. I think most folks just assume all politicians lie. With that as a baseline, the only thing left is who lies more effectively? Of course the problem is as a reporter, when you start treating a lie as "a side of the story" then you, in fact, become a carrier of the lie, because you lend legitimacy to the lie by employing a false equivalency.
UPDATE: For the record, they're still lying. Like just today. Incredible. I actually think they're now overplaying it and making their condescension and complete disregard for the American intelligence a little too obvious.
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