It's Election Season, so Wash Your Hands Often

It's Election Season, so Wash Your Hands Often

In this very negative election season, the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns don't sweat accuracy. Even if fact-checking PolitiFact rates a 30-second spot as "pants-on-fire" false or Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler gives it four Pinocchios -- his maximum rating -- no worries; they don't clean up their act. As Slate's John Dickerson wrote, to the grizzled campaign operatives of 2012, "if you're not getting four Pinocchios or a pants-on-fire, you're not doing it right."

Last week's mud fight began with a Romney campaign ad claiming that in a July 12 memorandum, the Obama administration "quietly announced a...