If you are in an election against a Republican and your opponent makes a charge against you for something you know you didn’t do, your first reaction may be to shrug it off or deny it.

However, there is more that you can do with the charge. You have to realize that the charge is probably not completely fictitious. It is probably a sign that this is something your opponent is doing.

There are several reasons why the Republicans make these charges.

1. They want to charge you with doing something that will make you look bad.
2. They want to tie you up with having to make denials so that you cannot talk about issues.
3. They want to immunize themselves against the charge of doing something bad, so they charge you with it before you can charge them with it.
4. They fool the media who may report about the shenanigan. Because they have to be fair and balanced, the media duly note that both sides have made the same charge against each other.
5. They fool the voters, who think if both sides are accused of doing the same thing, then it cannot be a deciding factor in the choice.

Fortunately, they have not fooled Barack Obama.  He realizes that any charge they make is revealing of a crime that the opponents have actually perpetrated. Instead of having to have a team of investigators looking for Republican crimes, he just has to sit back and wait for the Republicans to tell him what they did.  He can then send his legal team into action.  If the action is forceful enough, he can stop the crime and reveal the perpetrators for the criminal, liars that they are.

You want examples of item 4. above?  How about Bob Schiefer in the third debate mentioning that both sides have accused each other of lying?  He made no judgment about which side has told the largest number of lies nor tried to compare the significance of the misstatements of fact on both sides.  To the fair and balanced media, a minor error is the moral equivalent of a blatant lie.

Follow this link to a recent Associated Press story headlined as “Issue of race grows with likelihood of Obama win”. They mention Obama supporter, John Lewis’s charge that the McCain campaign is “sowing the seeds of hatred and division”, before they mention the California GOP group that distributed anti-Obama literature with stereotypical black American images of watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken.

On the one hand, the part of John Lewis’s charges that are mentioned in the story are true.  On the other hand there is nothing truthful about what the California GOP group did. How is this fair and balanced reporting?