Katherine Seelye at The New York Times has a good piece up about the persistence of campaign lies, even after media and fact checking organizations have repeatedly debunked the claims. “But why, with all this fact checking, and with traditional news organizations increasingly emboldened to call out the candidates, do candidates repeat inaccuracies?” she asks.
Still, it's a clarion call that comes a tad late (and kind of predictably buoyed by opinions from the likes of cognitive scientist George Lakoff, a.k.a. Champion of Framing). Jonathan Martin, for one, wrote about it last week at Politico, after McCain’s interview with the ladies of The View, as did Slate. (The NYT had a thorough news story on the interview, but didn’t really prod the trend.) Should it take a comment from Karl Rove (on Fox News this weekend) to highlight the fact that false statements should, at bare minimum, have a short shelf life?
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