Civility In The Era Of Obama

Barack Hussein Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the rest of the Democratic Party have dragged politics into the gutter because it give them a home field advantage.

The election campaign of the 44th U.S. president is now calling another candidate for the American presidency a "liar." This is a new low. It is amazing and depressing to hear this term being used as a formal strategy by people at the highest level of American politics. 

"Liar" is a potent and ugly word with a sleazy political pedigree. But "liar" is not being deployed only by party attack dogs or the Daily Kos comment queue. Mitt Romney is being called a "liar" by officials at the top of the Obama re-election campaign. Speaking the day after the debate in the press cabin of Air Force One, top Obama adviser David Plouffe said, "We thought it was important to let people know that someone who would lie to 50 million Americans, you should have some questions about whether that person should sit in the Oval Office."

The Democratic National Committee's Brad Woodhouse said, "Plenty of people have pointed out what a liar Mitt Romney is." Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter says Republicans "think lying is a virtue." 

Explicitly calling someone a "liar" is—or used to be—a serious and rare charge, in or out of politics. It's a loaded word. It crosses a line. "Liar" suggests bad faith and conscious duplicity—a total, cynical falsity. 

Politics isn't beanbag, but politicians past had all sorts of devices to say or suggest an opponent was playing fast and loose with the truth. This week's Obama TV ad, "How Can We Trust Mitt Romney?" would have been perfectly legit absent the Plouffe "liar" prepping.