The Forces of Deceit

Cyrano de Romney? Or Geppetto's latest creation?

By now you've read that Mitt Romney signaled the quality-type guy he is by including, in his first campaign commercial, a tape of President Obama saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

The problem with the commercial, of course, was that the statement was taken out of context: The statement was made in 2008, and Obama was explicitly quoting an aide to John McCain. So the entire quote is:

Even as we face the most serious economic crisis of our time, even as you are worried about keeping your jobs or paying your bills or staying in your homes, my opponent's campaign announced earlier this month that they want to ‘turn the page’ on the discussion about our economy so they can spend the final weeks of this election attacking me instead. Sen. McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.’

When challenged about how dishonest the ad was, Romney senior advisor Tom Roth answered, "He did say the words. That's his voice."

Wow, talk about your moral relativism!

So the folks at Think Progress decided to make a little video of Mitt, using only words he really said, in his own voice:



Maybe the Obama campaign should run it, as an obvious object lesson. Nah.

It has been encouraging, though, to see the news media responding to this ad. I've been very critical of them in the past, so fair is fair:  for once, they're pretty much calling it like it is:

"Misleading" – CBS News

"... the second time in as many weeks that Romney has taken an Obama quote out of context." – the Associated Press

"Ridiculously misleading" – Politifact

Think of it: "He did say the words. That's his voice." Why does anybody take these people seriously? They're not taking themselves seriously.