The quest to try and get the media to note that the McCain campaign has been nakedly and repeatedly lying over and over again is gaining some traction. But the primary barrier to it really receiving mainstream penetration is the perception that "everybody does it", and that whatever McCain is saying, it does not fall beyond the typical exaggerations and distortions that we frankly come to expect out of modern politicians.
But there is a difference between what the McCain campaign has been doing and the "typical" campaign. The following McCain ad is an example of a normal, partisan, mildly but not unreasonably unfair piece:
This an effective ad, and there is nothing too outrageous about it. Sure, it's a cheap shot, and sure that $42,000 figure is pretty dicey. But if this was all that the McCain campaign had been running, nobody would be having a conversation about how McMaverick decided to shove his integrity out a jet window from 30,000 feet. There is a qualitative difference between this ad, and the one's accusing Obama of supporting sex education for kindergarterners. Or Sarah Palin bleating about how she opposed the bridge to nowhere. Those are far more brazen and pernicious. This is a typical political ad. It's important to remember the difference.
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Good point about how effective that tax ad was. In canvassing a Philadelphia neighborhood today, I encountered two different women, both lower-middle-class, who were convinced that Obama would raise their taxes and said they were voting McCain specifically because of that. I could not convince them otherwise.
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