Why can’t politicians tell the truth?

I’ve said before that neither presidential candidate is telling the truth. A more accurate statement would be that each campaign is being intentionally misleading. You may think I’m cynical, but I’m really not. I believe we are better than this. We don’t have to put up with it.

Here are few distortions from each candidate.

Deregulation

I’ve heard the Democrat campaign beat into the ground John McCain’s record on deregulation. While this is true, the claims that deregulation is what let us into this financial crisis is misleading. Deregulation of the financial industry definitely had a role in the state we are in, but all deregulation is not created equally.

Without deregulation of the telecommunications industry we would undoubtedly not have the innovations and choices we have today. Advances such as iPhones, Vontage boxes, internet air cards, cable internet, and inexpensive DSL would have been severely hampered without deregulation.

They are counting on being able to convince Americans that “Deregulation” is the source of all of our woes, and that McCain has been supporting it for years.

Funding of Troops

The Republican campaign rails on the Democrats for voting against funding the troops. They did in 2004 to Kerry, and they are doing in 2008 to Obama.

Again, this is a true statement, but is intentionally misleading. Obama voted against a particular bill that included troop funding. The implication is that if Obama had his way the troops would not be funded.

The reality is that if Obama had his way the bill would have been defeated, and they would have had to alter the bill in order for it to pass. In this particular case Obama wanted a timeline for the withdrawal of troops.

Think of it like the bail-out bill. The House Republicans voted it down. They were forced to alter the bill and it passed five days later. Just because a congressman voted against the bill does not mean he was against funding the economy.

Negotiations Without Preconditions

McCain blasts Obama for saying that he would open diplomatic channels with nations that we have previously not negotiated with. This is a valid difference of opinion; however, the McCain campaign paints a distorted view of what Obama would do.

They imply that Obama would fly right over to North Korea and begin negotiating. They know this is not true. They know that just about every former secretary of state agrees with Obama’s position, but they frame it as being a kooky, dangerous, idea.

Tax Cuts/Increases

Both parties are guilty of promising everyone tax cuts with no tax increases. I am so sick of hearing politicians promise everything under the sun with no tax increases. This is the idea that is at the core of our financial crisis. The idea of something for nothing.

Why can’t a politician say “You know what? I have a lot of programs that I’d like to implement, but we don’t have enough money. If we want to enact these new programs the tax payers are going to have to foot the bill. Here is why I believe these programs are important enough to raise your taxes.”

All candidates engage in this behavior, and it’s easy to chalk it up to the way politics works. I don’t accept this premise.

Why do we need to accept this as the status quo? It is an insult to our intelligence to sit and listen over and over again to an argument that is at its core, baseless. And they know that it’s baseless. Don’t be fooled into thinking they really believe this stuff. Well, maybe Palin does, but that’s even worse.