Analysis: Who's afraid of the big bad truth?
McCain has a truth squad, but Obama's makes big news
09:42 AM CDT on Monday, September 29, 2008
By John Mills
KMOV-TV
Analysis
Stan Kostecki, KMOV-TV
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce speak with KMOV-TV's John Mills outside a Barack Obama campaign office in the Central West End on Sept. 23, 2008.
John McCain's campaign has a truth squad which includes prosecutors who support his candidacy, according to reports and a campaign source.
Last Tuesday without any fanfare, the Barack Obama campaign announced Jennifer Joyce and Bob McCulloch, the top prosecutors in St. Louis city and St. Louis County, were joining something called an Obama truth squad.
They plan to respond immediately to any misleading advertisements and statements that might violate Missouri ethics laws.
"We want to keep this campaign focused on issues," Joyce told me. "Missourians don't want to be distracted by these divisive character attacks."
The truth squad's plan is to indentify false attacks and respond immediately with truthful information, Joyce and McCulloch say.
Truthful information like: Obama is a Christian who plans to cut taxes for anyone making under $250,000 a year.
The Obama campaign says prosecutors from the Kansas City area and some rural areas are also joining the truth squad, and Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer was also expected to be part of the team.
"Whether it is directly attributable to the campaign or one of the soft money operations," McCulloch told me, "if they're not going to tell the truth, then somebody's got to step up and say 'wait a minute, that's not true, this is the truth.'"
For reasons that are still not fully clear, prosecutors promising to tell the public the truth have sparked outrage among supporters of John McCain.
Three days later, I got a call from KMOX radio talk show host Mark Reardon. (I'll paraphrase.)
That story you did last night is really getting a lot of attention, Reardon said.
I was off yesterday. What story? I asked.
The one about the Obama truth squad, he said.
Oh, that story I did Tuesday at 6, I responded.
Well, Rush Limbaugh just talked about it, and the blogoshpere has it, and it's getting big. It's really going to get big, Reardon said.
AP
Rush Limbaugh
Reardon was correct.
More than 90,000 people from across the country watched my report on KMOV.com. Click here to watch the report
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