Perhaps because it's specious? In the article the author mentions "Swift Boat" -- I think this is an excellent example of the problem. The Swift Boat ads were seen mainly by one party as being fallacious. To use a recent example, when candidate A says Candidate B voted for sex education for Kintergartners, Candidate B replies it was age-appropriate. Then Candidate A shows the exact wording of the bill, which calls for a discussion of the transmission vectors for HIV.

Everybody can pile on to me about how my examples suck, but you're just reinforcing the point: there is no universal truth squad that could un-tangle all of this rhetoric. That's what you, the voter are supposed to be doing. Stop looking to somebody else to do one of the few things you have a duty to do in a democracy.

Sorry for the rant. The article just struck me as a great example of the great gap between what passes as common sense and what would actually work.

Case in point -- the Obama sex-education bill that you cite. The exact wording of the bill in question was:

"Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered IN ANY OF grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV." (emphasis mine)

In other words, it's not mandating sex education for kindergarteners -- it's saying that any sex education that they do receive must have a certain curriculum. It also says that:

"All course material and instruction shall be age and developmentally appropriate."

In other words: if you're trying to suggest that it's actually impossible to determine the truthfulness of a charge, this example is terrible. It's an obvious, blatant distortion of the truth by the Republican campaign, and it can't be justified. Any reasonable, intelligent person can see that fact.

If, however, you're suggesting that political parties would cry like babies if held to a higher standard of debate, I can't dispute your assertion. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. If we can hold drug manufacturers to objective standards for truth in advertising, there's no fundamental reason that we can't do the same thing for political advertising.

So if you're going to talk about an example of dishonesty on the part of the McCain campaign, you should follow it up immediately by an example of dishonesty on the part of the Obama campaign. That way, everybody stays happy, and it stops things from degenerating into political arguments.

It's important to be civil and logical; it's not important for every participant in a debate to make the other side's arguments for them.

Ah, but there shouldn't be "another side" in these sorts of discussions.

I'm just trying to propose ways in which it's possible to discuss politics in the abstract without the discussion veering off into arguments about the boring minutiae of giant douche vs turd sandwich that is going to be infecting the rest of the internet for the next couple of months.

I believe this is called being mature.

Good luck with your effort. It's tough, and if you make the slightest mistake (such as using examples that tilt against the same party) you're sure to be punished.

PS: The stance that both sides of a debate always deserve equal time pervasive and wrong. When someone says the acceleration due to gravity of an object is always 100km/s^2 they are wrong and there is little point in giving them identical amounts of time. Think about the coverage given to the anti global worming / evolution / science crowd and ask your self is this reasonable?

The problem with American politics is that everyone has a vote, not that this is bad of course, but since the average American is so poorly educated he is easier to trick with talking points, fancy rhetoric and downright lies. As a consequence of this any politician that wants to stand a chance of winning must adress the people in simple language and with simple messages - even if they're stretching the truth or are outright lies. Lowest common denominator.

I come from a country with an excellent education system, which means that the lowest common denominator is much higher, and thus politicians can start talking about the issues, and still appeal to the broad masses. A candidate that lied would instantly be held accountable by the press and by the people.

My suggestions is more subsidiarity. There isn't really a reason for the US President to handle healthcare or education when the states can do it (which most of them already do). Thus, if there's less to do for the president, the people would only have to hold him accountable on a smaller budget, on fewer issues. Something that's considerably easier than the gigantic thing they have to administrate right now.

The problem is that there is an incentive for the politicans in power to keep people stupid. It makes them easier to control and manipulate.

But, I see you are from Denmark so at the same time it seems that it is easier to have a higher level of education for a more homogenous population.

Politicians simply have nothing to offer people who are wealthy, educated, and in good health.

(Starship Troopers ftw)

RASCZAK Really ? I wonder what the city fathers of Hiroshima would have to say about that. You.

CARMEN They probably wouldn't say anything. Hiroshima was destroyed.

RASCZAK Correct. Naked force has settled more issues in history than any other factor. The contrary opinion 'violence never solves anything' is wishful thinking at its worst.

RASCZAK People who forget that always pay... They pay with their lives and their freedom.

RASCZAK You. Tell me the moral difference, if any, between the citizen and the civilian ?

JOHNNY The difference lies in the field of civic virtue. A citizen accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic, of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Starship-Troopers.html

It's a great way to keep a bunch of heavily-armed people trained to efficiently kill other people from turning on each other, but it's not necessarily the thinking you want out your voting populace, unless you want to make sure that society never moves forward.

The military attitude also strikes me as being pretty much anathema to hacking.

Now, if you want to talk about mandatory public service, where that two years can be spent doing social work, student teaching, etc., then I can get behind the idea.

For most of our country's history, large portions of the population have been exposed to military service sometime in their lifetime. This is the longest period (since the 1970s) where the greatest percentage of people have not had that experience. It's a great social experiment, one that's not generally acknowledged.

I'm not going to argue your stereotype. Suffice it to say I have several concrete examples that each of your points are wrong. "Not even wrong" would be a better characterization.

There are of course other obvious problems with making voting rights dependent upon military service. Specifically, I doubt that same-sex marriage and civil unions laws would have passed in even the smattering of states where they did, if only because few of those most directly affected (i.e., homosexuals) would have been allowed into the military, and therefore, allowed to vote.

Of course all of these will be called "lies" by the opposing party, but they're not really. A sensible politician will never say anything provably false -- everything he/she says will have a back door that he/she can slip out of if it's challenged.

B) The problem with this idea is that advertisements are rarely factually incorrect. Far more often the attack ads are merely insinuations, or far out interpretations of actual fact. These are arguably more dangerous than outright fallacy, because there is something to back them up.

C) Even if this sort of legislation were to come to pass, nothing would change. Just because you can't lie doesn't mean you'll start talking about things that the average Joe Schmoe voter doesn't care about, like economic policy, national defense, trade relations, etc... The average voter takes the position of the party he affiliates with. If you don't believe me, look at how well McCain did when he was actually running a clean campaign and did things like just talk about the issues.

In fact, when a politician is caught in a good lie ("Read my lips", "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman...") it's golden for the enemy. There's no real incentive to keep the other guy honest.

Had to read this in high school, I liked it

A much better stick would be a throttling of access to that medium for the perpetrator.

The problem is hit-and-run attacks from allied but autonomous entities that melt into thin air (as with Swift Boat and Al Queda), leaving no assets and nothing to lose.

How about punishing not just the people who placed the ad, but the side which benefited from their unfair use of the media?

The best solution would be an informed electorate that pays attention to reality, but that's just a nice dream in a country where 70% or more believe in a fairy-God.

Why not just remove all political ads from mass media, just like cigarettes? Save a billion dollars. People will figure out who to vote for just like they figure out which brand to smoke.

While I like your idea, the law supports the exact opposite.

There is, of course, this pesky thing called "Freedom of speech".

I say ban all political ads or ban wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zones but am not willing to live with both at the same time.

Unfortunately, they revenue seekers first. They are accountable to their shareholders (American or not). It's the politicians themselves that should be looking out for citizens first (not themselves or corporations). That is their job. Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten that in the last couple of decades.

The problem is not with them, the problem is that the ones who remember don't get elected.

We are lucky in the UK as we are all taxed to pay for the BBC. Americans can also watch BBC America if they chose.

Now this has some good points, and the BBC actually winds up producing some very good television, but it's definitely the "elite telling you what to watch" model.