March 10, 2004

What's misrepresentation?

If you say one thing yesterday and another thing today is that misrepresentation? That's the problem that I have with this Spinsanity title "Kerry joins others in misrepresenting his platform". After all, can't you have grown from one position to another? Or might you be lying both times? Or might you even be confused and not know what's going on? To say that Kerry is misrepresenting his position is to engage in a very particular set of spin. It says that his official position papers are his actual position and that when he strays from that, he's actually misrepresenting himself.

This might be too cruel or too kind but it would only be right by merest happenstance because Kerry's positions on so many issues seem to be in flux. For a site like Spinsanity that is devoted to cutting through political spin, such a candidate is a real challenge and it looks like they haven't thought through this problem. When you have a position and somebody else claims it is something else, that's clear misrepresentation. But when you do it to yourself, that's very often going to be something else.

Posted by TMLutas at March 10, 2004 12:43 PM