Live blogging of the first Presidential Debate.

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.

Back on August 29, James Fallows made an observation about Sarah Palin and about running for President (or Vice President). Here’s how he described the stakes:

If someone is campaigning for the presidency or vice presidency, there’s an extra twist. That person has to have a line of argument to offer on any conceivable issue. Quick, without pausing in the next ninety seconds, tell me what you think about: the balance of relations between Taiwan and mainland China, and exactly what signals we’re sending to Hamas, and what we think about Russia’s role in the G-8 and potentially in NATO, and where North Korea stands on its nuclear pledges — plus Iran while we’re at it, plus the EU after the Irish vote, plus cap-and-trade as applied to India and China, and what’s the right future for South Ossetia; and let’s not even start on domestic issues.

And here’s how he described the inevitable outcome:

Let’s assume that Sarah Palin is exactly as smart and disciplined as Barack Obama. But instead of the year and a half of nonstop campaigning he has behind him, and Joe Biden’s even longer toughening-up process, she comes into the most intense period of the highest stakes campaign with absolutely zero warmup or preparation. If she has ever addressed an international issue, there’s no evidence of it in internet-land.

The smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues she will be forced to address. This is long before she gets to a debate with Biden; it’s what the press is going to start out looking for.

This is the spectacle that began today.

Update: Here’s Fallows on her interview with Charlie Gibson.