Lies and the People Who Lie

Tom Kean Jr., who's only losing by a mere 6-8 points in the New Jersey Senate race because people think he's his father, the co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, has decided to make a campaign film based on demonstrably false charges about his opponent, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez.

Mr. Kean's chief campaign consultant, Matt Leonardo, a strategist for Republican candidates, disclosed the plans in an interview and said the film would be "very similar" in purpose to the commercials used to attack the military record of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential race.

In other words, the film would be a lie, and everyone involved in it would know it was a lie, but they'll broadcast it anyway.

Mr. Kean's most serious charge is that Mr. Menendez was "part of a massive illegal kickback scheme" as a Union City official in 1978, and not the courageous truth teller depicted in his résumé. Mr. Kean charges that Mr. Menendez cooperated with prosecutors to keep himself out of jail.

Mr. Kean's charges are not, however, supported by the public record and were repudiated by independent authorities including the four assistant United States attorneys who prosecuted Union City officials of that era for racketeering and corruption. There is no truth, those former officials say, to the Kean campaign's charge that Mr. Menendez made a deal to keep himself out of prison.

The prosecutors said the actions of Mr. Menendez, as the secretary of the Union City Board of Education from 1978 to 1982, were "gutsy" and "courageous." They said he was never in legal jeopardy. During a four-month trial in 1981 and 1982, the corrupt contractor at the center of the scheme testified that Mr. Menendez created headaches for the plotters when he balked at processing fraudulent paperwork needed for a kickback scheme.

Mr. Leonardo did not directly dispute that information, published Sunday in The New York Times and The Star-Ledger of Newark, but described it as a "set of views" and said other people held different views.

Politics has become so corrosive because at least one side has absolutely no shame about lying or doing whatever it takes to get elected. Menendez is already responding to this, which is a good thing. But the candidate, not surrogates but the candidate, should be dogged with questions from the press about this deliberate lying, and shamed into distancing himself from it. So far he has refused to answer the question.