“When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.” ~ Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964), 31st US President, Republican

Politics are a dirty game.  If a candidate can find a flaw, a weakness in his opponent, he will capitalize on it.  If he can’t find a flaw, it seems that there are vast organizations behind him that will be happy to create, design, and implement a series of perceived flaws against his opponent.

I’m beginning to wonder where the honor, the integrity, in our country’s leaders has gone.  On one hand, we have a candidate that not only called out organizations working in his favor and against his opponent (Kerry pretty much slammed MoveOn.org for ridiculing Bush’s military record) and is fighting for his own reputation.  On the other hand, we have an incumbant who is sitting back, watching his opponent being harangued by manufactured lies on his behalf.

Is there honor in this?

Even the neo-conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, has an article by Senior Editor Andrew Ferguson, in which Ferguson recognizes the Republican scramble to discredit Kerry on his military record.

Republicans have no such luck this time, and so they scramble to reassure themselves that they nevertheless are doing the right thing, voting against a war hero. The simplest way to do this is to convince themselves that the war hero isn’t really a war hero. If sufficient doubt about Kerry’s record can be raised, we can vote for Bush without remorse. But the calculations are transparently desperate. Reading some of the anti-Kerry attacks over the last several weeks, you might conclude that this is the new conservative position: A veteran who volunteered for combat duty, spent four months under fire in Vietnam, and then exaggerated a bit so he could go home early is the inferior, morally and otherwise, of a man who had his father pull strings so he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam in the first place.

If conservative sources are aware of this ploy (and talking about it), maybe it’s time that we, the citizens, actually took a stance and said enough is enough.  We don’t want dirty politics.  We don’t want to hear about manufactured lies.

The old addage, “Don’t say anything if you can’t say something nice” is around for a reason.  Lies will come back to haunt you.