Do I make myself more handsome by portraying others as ugly? Can I make my ideas sound better by distorting those of others?

When we knowingly misrepresent facts, we’re lying. And lying is among the gravest of threats to our speech freedoms and to the survival of our representative democracy.

That noted, how goes our current election?

Consider the recent kerfuffle over Governor Mitt Romney’s saying “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for [President Obama] no matter what….These are people who pay no income tax….[M]y job is not to worry about those people.”

President Obama’s campaign immediately characterized the video as proof that Governor Romney doesn’t care about half the population.

First, virtually all among the “47 percent” are paying some sales, payroll, gasoline, cigarette, property, real estate, or sundry other taxes. Many pay no income taxes because their incomes, from modest pensions and social security, are too low. Undoubtedly the Governor understands this—and if he doesn’t, then his campaign faces other issues.

Second, the Governor’s meaning clearly wasn’t that he didn’t care for the “47 percent.” Rather, he was framing a campaign strategy for how he could win the election. This is transparent behavior for both parties, which routinely zero in on states and populations that are “in play,” conceding others to their competitor.

Yet in their responses these past couple of weeks, neither campaign behaved with much integrity. We learned nothing new about tax positions. Or entitlements. Or the deficit.
Truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But ideas without integrity are infertile husks containing empty words. They’re barren. They produce no creative friction, no heat, no energy for us to move forward.

The extent to which we the people enable political dishonesty by welcoming what we want to hear, rather than demanding what we need to know, we are responsible for our current polarization.

When the national dialogue about our future is smothered by fabrications for our votes, the integrity of our own linen quickly becomes dirty.