A kind of lying we've come to accept

By Bill King

Several weeks ago, Mitt Romney's campaign ran an ad that included a clip from a speech President Obama delivered in 2008. In the clip, then-candidate Obama says, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

What the ad did not reveal was that immediately before Obama spoke those words, he indicated he was quoting John McCain. The clip was about as deceptive and out of context as one can imagine.

When Romney was confronted, he defended the ad. He said a news release issued along with the ad stated that Obama was quoting McCain, making the tortured argument that it was fair game because it showed that Obama would now have to live by his criticism of McCain.

Malarkey. If that were the purpose of the ad, then it would have been easy enough to say that in the ad.

More recently, in a sign that there may be karma in the political universe, Romney himself was taken outrageously out of context. In a speech about the advantages of private health insurance, Romney was making the point that private companies, unlike a single government payer, could be fired. He said, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."

Romney's Republican opponents leaped on his miscue, taking his quote out of context and implying that it related to firing people from their jobs.

These episodes provoked little public or media outrage. If anyone took our personal statements so out of context, we would be furious. And yet we seem resigned to it among those seeking our highest office.

These two out-of-context quotes are, on their faces, incredible. The chances that Obama would have said he didn't dare talk about the economy, or that Romney would have said he likes firing people, are nil. We should begin by being more skeptical.

But we should also make it clear that we will not tolerate such deceptive tactics. Let's not mince words: The intentionally misleading use of a quote out of context is a lie. And liars do not deserve our vote.