I’m inclined to accept this critique of a recent Obama ad alleging that McCain is surrounded by lobbyists. Here’s the ad.

The critique appears in today’s Washington Post, but it isn’t signed and it should be. Not only does the tone of the critique require that its author take responsibility for it, but the piece is written in the first person singular. If verb tenses matter, so does point of view.

And I’m wondering why Ms. Anonymous doesn’t take on this ad, which is far more devastating than the one she reviews.

Of course the second ad meets the usage test, past tense and all. I’m thinking this may be one of those reporterly suggestions of equivalence, even though McCain’s folks only severed their ties with lobbyists in March (if then, as some skeptics point out in the comment thread for this article), and as recently as February (as Anonymous points out) were carrying on the business of their clients from McCain’s Straight Talk Express bus. Still, Anonymous argues as follows:

The McCain campaign has taken a lot of heat from the fact-checking community over the last week for deceptive, at times dishonest, campaign ads. But the Obama campaign is hardly immune from criticism about misleading advertising. A good example: a couple of ads that slam the Republican nominee for employing lobbyists while insisting that “it’s over” for the special interests.

Notice that Anonymous mentions “a couple of ads” but discusses only one specifically. Where’s the other one, I wonder? I think the Obama campaign should correct the verb tenses in the offending ad. It would lose no punch for that. But I also think there’s no equivalence between that ad, or the Obama ad that misstated some facts about McCain’s record on education, and the constant barrage of lies coming out of the McCain campaign.