Why I Miss Ross Perot: Mitt Romney and Barack Obama Ads Are Full of Outright Lies
Did you know that Mitt Romney is responsible for the death of a steel worker’s wife? Or that President Obama gutted the work requirement for welfare? Do you remember Mr. Obama’s famous “Apology Tour” that kicked off his first term? How about that then-Governor Romney outsourced thousands of Massachusetts jobs to India?
It’s amazing what you can learn from ads in this year’s presidential campaign: namely, some of our political leaders and their supporters are lying. Not stretching the truth or spinning the facts (which we expect) but outright lying. While advertising shouldn’t be your main source of education, it also shouldn’t be a source of disinformation.
Factchecker.org has never been so busy. You can spend hours on their website, watching them pull threads that unravel almost every statement made in almost every political ad of this long campaign season. If you Google “lies in 2012 presidential campaign ads,” you get 224,000,000 hits.
As an American, I’m disgusted. As a guy who makes ads for a living, I’m shocked. (And it’s hard to shock an ad guy). Imagine Coke and Pepsi running ad campaigns that attack the other brand. And I don’t mean the kinds of entertaining ads that show Pepsi truck drivers surreptitiously trying to order a Coke at a restaurant. I mean attack ads like our presidential candidates and their Super PAC supporters are running. Twisting facts. Accusing the other side of horrible labor practices. Personal attacks on the other brand’s CEO.