The factual lie.

It’s not a contradiction in terms.

It’s a fact of life.

A way of life, it seems.

An art form for which Ohioans have developed a keen appreciation.

After all, we’ve had time.

Although the lying season began at Labor Day in most of the nation, because we’re lucky enough to be a swing state, things kicked off here right after the Memorial Day parades.

The National Weather Service doesn’t keep records on liefall, so it’s impossible to determine whether we’ve had a record this year in the Miami Valley.

Besides, there’s a disagreement on what’s being measured.

Some prefer to think of it not as a liefall but as a severe and enduring truth drought.

Back for a moment to the factual lie.

Let’s take a simple example.

A package that says “organic” and “all natural.”

Sounds promising, doesn’t it?

Maybe even nutritious.

Arsenic is both organic and natural.

And, in case you were wondering, it has absolutely no trans fats.

Let’s take another example a little closer to reality.

Low in fat!

That sounds healthful, like the kind of food we might want to buy to lose weight.

But you look on the side of the package and see it has a ton of sugar.

So if you bought it and ate it, you’d be out of luck, at least if you were trying to lose weight.

Still, you’d have to admit, the message itself was factual.

The advertiser just decided not to put the words “high in sugar” in front of an exclamation point.

It is, after all, their right.

And if you didn’t bother to read the side before you went to the cash register?

Your bad.

If I parade out a fact that seems warm and fuzzy and you fall for it?

I win.

The hottest warm and fuzzy of this year’s campaign is jobs, of course.

Political advertisers figure we’re willing to do almost anything for them.

As for dangers that might be the political equivalent of fracking?

No need to mention that.

And it’s easier to get by with it in political ads: There’s no side of the package to check.

Of course, it’s not just the and fuzzy technique that works.

There’s also the dark and scary.

We know that, too.

Just as the warm and fuzzy exploits our positive prejudices, the dark and scary exploits our negative ones.

And commercials of this sort are really a test to see just what outrage we might be willing to believe about someone we don’t like in the first place.

The good thing about these bad commercials: They’re the easiest to spot.

They send the blood pressure up, make us want to throw things, and make us want to shout out, “Can you believe this?”

If you find yourself shouting this out at a commercial, it’s likely the commercial you can’t believe.

A final note here.

After enduring the past few presidential elections in Ohio, I’ve stopped participating in public opinion polls when the phone rings.

Why?

I have the feeling that political operatives out there are calling primarily to test the effectiveness of sleazy commercials. They want to know whether the ads have been effective in nudging the numbers as the creators had hoped.

The person on the other end might say, “We just really want your opinion.”

And, like the claim on the front of a package, that might be factual.

To me, though, that’s no guarantee it’s the truth.