Time’s Michael Scherer argues that criticizing a politician’s old votes when they’re easier to attack than their new proposals is unfair. Here’s what he says:

Here’s an old political consultant trick: You want attack your opponent for supporting Policy X, because your pollsters tell you such an attack would help your candidate. But there’s a problem. Your opponent doesn’t clearly support Policy X. So you send off researchers to find an old legislative vote that you can use in an ad to mislead the public about your opponent’s plans, without lying outright. Instead of saying “My opponent supports Policy X,” all you have to say is “My opponent once voted for something that sounded a lot like Policy X. Be very afraid.”

I don’t necessarily agree with him that this is necessarily unfair. To show that I’m not just being an Obama partisan on this, let me provide an example that pertains to my preferred candidate. Obama’s tax plan promises to lower taxes for everyone making less than $250,000. Sounds good to me, but campaign promises are cheap. I think McCain is perfectly justified in going through Obama’s voting record and arguing that given his history, this is a promise he is unlikely to keep. (McCain’s people constantly claim that Obama is going to raise taxes on the middle class, and the Obama people argue that they’re lying because Obama has promised to lower their taxes. I think there’s space to confront a candidate with their own legislative history as long as it’s done honestly.)

I think it’s out of bounds to intentionally distort your opponent’s record. For example, the claim that Obama supported sex education for kindergarteners was dishonest and unfair.

But if nothing else, if a policy you propose differs with the votes a politician has previously made, they ought to be obliged to reconcile their voting history with what they claim they want to implement.

John Scalzi posts eloquently on a topic that has been consuming my thoughts lately: what does it mean with the most effective tactic in a nation’s politics is to shamelessly lie, even after your lies have been exposed?

Definitely read the whole thing, but the part I wanted to quote is his explanation of why Obama should not adopt McCain’s tactics:

To go back to Obama and whether he should embrace the philosophy of flat-out lying, perhaps it makes sense for him to do so, but I certainly hope he doesn’t. Not because I think it’s better to have honor than power (although I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have honor rather than power) but because I believe that someone should be making the argument that one can win an election by something other than a willful determination to lie in people’s faces, and to encourage them to cheer those lies.

The fact of the matter is that at this point in the election, it’s not just about what positions the candidates hold on various political subjects. It’s also about how the candidates, and the parties behind, choose to see the people they intend to lead. The GOP and the McCain campaign, irrespective of its political positions, sees the American voter as deserving lies, lots of lies, repeated as often as necessary to win. And maybe they’re right about it. We’ll know soon enough.

Obama has famously said that the election is not about him, it’s about us. People accuse him of false modesty, but I think he nails it completely. This election presents us with two choices, and who the majority of Americans choose says a lot more about us than it does about the candidates.

Here’s Tom Toles on the same topic.