"A media consensus has formed that John McCain is telling whoppers to win the presidency. Influential commentator Mark Halperin, for example, says, "Lies are more central to the McCain campaign than to the Obama campaign."

Halperin said the same thing in 2004--the Republican candidate was more dishonest than the Democratic one, his lies more "central to his efforts to win"--and he was wrong then.

He's wrong, too. Exhibit A in the media's case against McCain as a man who will say anything to win is his ad on Obama's support of sex education for kindergartners--but McCain is right.

Sure, McCain has sometimes stretched the truth, putting himself in the best light and Obama in the worst. But Obama is now running an ad taking Rush Limbaugh's words out of context and, ludicrously, suggesting that McCain and Limbaugh are close political allies on immigration. Obama has previously distorted McCain's comments about maintaining a military presence in Iraq to suggest, falsely, that McCain wants 100 years of war, and seized on snippets of McCain comments to suggest that he thinks all is well with the economy.

If one were in a partisan frame of mind, one might even say that Obama's self-portrayal as someone interested in reaching across the aisle to accomplish things is a lie. I don't expect reporters to say that. But when they say that McCain is campaigning dirtier than Obama, a partisan cast of mind is exactly what they're revealing."