Obama over-states accomplishments in Congress and Clinton claims to have run, ducking, from sniper fire: anyone who sees this as an instance of “both sides exaggerating” is spending too much time at the office. One really sinister effect of extended campaigns, I think, in which the campaigners and the campaign reporters spend so much time listening to each other is that they both lose their ability to distinguish between rhetorical embellishment and outright, take-your-breath-away, lies like running — with your only child — from sniper fire.

Posts like this (”both sides of this political contest are exaggerating” or the follow-on insight that competing exaggerations make it hard for the public to choose one side or the other as the party of truth), rather that contributing to some new understanding of the campaigns, may actually contribute to the public’s concern that the media covering the campaigns are as tone-deaf as the campaigners.