For truth, voters are now on their own, November 5, 2019

Some years ago, I worked on a political campaign that broke an unwritten rule — a rule that barely exists today.

An inaccuracy was pointed out in one of our late-October television ads, and we briefly kept it on the air anyway. It had been a genuine mistake on our part: We incorrectly ascribed a tax surcharge to our opponent that wasn’t his doing, though he had publicly supported it, and predictably he howled. A reporter called; we discussed our options and decided to stand by the ad, error and all.

We knew it was wrong to do that — I knew it was wrong — but we let ourselves rationalize our better angels away the best we could. The spot was cycling out in three days anyway, we told ourselves, and pulling it down early risked moving us from offense to defense at a critical juncture in the race over a charge that was close enough in a horseshoes-and-hand-grenades kind of way. Besides, the spot had gotten so deeply under our opponent’s skin that he was veering off message. Keeping it up felt almost tactical.

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