However, those who have been reading "One Man Watching" from the beginning will know that nothing presses my buttons like politicians or pundits who seem willing to give short shrift to the basic concept of telling the truth.

 Consequently, to those readers, my reaction to the words of Nan Aron, president of the Alliance For Justice, will come as no surprise. Questions of politics and law sit gingerly on a foundation of truth and honesty, and where the foundation is weak, so is everything which is built upon them. Today, on the Fourth Of July, when we celebrate our freedoms and the birth of our nation, it seems especially appropriate to remember that.

Brad Pardee
Editor

 Q: How can you tell when a politician is lying?
A: Their lips are moving.

 The popularity of jokes like this leave no doubt that people don't always trust their elected officials to speak the truth. Politicians themselves would tell us that this is a stereotype and that they (or at least the members of their party) do tell the truth. Rarely, though, does anybody actually come right out and suggest that dishonesty is the best policy.

 Like the other Sunday morning news shows, the primary subject on yesterday's Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace was, unsurprisingly, the vacancy on the United States Supreme Court created by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. They opened the program with C. Boyden Gray, Chairman of the Committee for Justice, and Nan Aron, President of the Alliance For Justice. In the course of their discussion with host Chris Wallace, Ms. Aron said something that simply amazed me.

 After Ms. Aron raised John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer as examples of the kind of people President Bush should nominate, her exchange with Chris Wallace went like this (taken from the transcript on the Fox News Sunday website):

WALLACE: Ms. Aron, during the campaign, the presidential campaign in 2004, the president was asked: Who are your models for the Supreme Court? And he made it very clear. He talked about Antonin Scalia. He talked about Clarence Thomas. Perhaps the two most conservative members of the court. It was an issue in the campaign. He won the campaign. Isn't he entitled? That's what elections are about.

ARON: Well...

WALLACE: Isn't he entitled to a qualified conservative of his liking?

ARON: That was then. He was running for president, and he was looking for the support and financial resources from the radical right in this country. Of course he'd make a statement like that, but now...

WALLACE: But wait a minute. He got elected president. The voters selected him.

ARON: No, but with the smallest margin of victory of any incumbent president. He is now the president of a huge country representing nearly 300 million people from all walks of life, representing divergent viewpoints. He has this momentous, historic opportunity to unite the country.

 Picture a candidate who, on the campaign trail, says, "I'm running for office, so I'll say whatever I think you want me to say in order to get elected. However, once I'm in office, you can expect me to me to disregard any commitments or positions I am taking now." That candidate wouldn't have a chance. That's why politicians who campaign one way and serve another have to explain themselves if they hope to hold on to the support of the principled voters who elected them.

 That, however, is what Ms.Aron is saying the President should do. One can only imagine her response if her group was one that was on the receiving end of electoral bait-and-switch, but that's really beside the point. It's not about who is misled and whose promises are kept. Rather, it's about whether words on the campaign trail are supposed to mean anything.

 If candidates were to follow the model Ms. Aron sets out for President Bush, then our elections will be less about informed choices and more about blind luck. We can listen to speeches and watch debates and interviews all we want, but if a candidate is simply telling us what he or she thinks we want to hear in order to give money and votes, then their candidacy is a fraud and the whole idea of democracy is undermined.

 Shame on any candidate who tries it.

 Shame on us if we let them get away with it.

 And shame on Nan Aron for suggesting that this is the way it ought to be.

When a flag has become worn and damaged to the point where it can no longer be flown or displayed, the proper response is a ceremony, often handled by a VFW chapter or a Boy Scout troop, in which the flag is retired and burned.

I wouldn't want anybody who witnesses that type of burning to think that they were witnessing a disrespectful protest, and I thank my readers for pointing out what I had forgotten.