Haircuts, Laughs and Prostate Cancer Survival Rates

Remember the John Edwards' $400 haircut? Google it and you get 658,000 hits. How about Hillary Clinton's laugh? Google that topic and you get 1,740,000 hits. Now Google Rudy Giuliani's lie about prostate cancer survival rates in England and the USA. You get 64,800 hits.

Paul Krugman, in todays NYT's has a few comments about this.

But here’s what I don’t understand: Why isn’t Mr. Giuliani’s behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?

For better or (mostly) for worse, political reporting is dominated by the search for the supposedly revealing incident, in which the candidate says or does something that reveals his true character. And this incident surely seems to fit the bill.

Leave aside the fact that Mr. Giuliani is simply lying about what the Democrats are proposing; after all, Mitt Romney is doing the same thing.

But health care is the pre-eminent domestic issue for the 2008 election. Surely the American people deserve candidates who do their homework on the subject.

Yes, $400 is alot to pay for a haircut and it says something about John Edwards. He's rich. And, Hillary has a hearty laugh. I'm not sure what that says about her. Both those topics have been extensively reported, discussed, debated, and blogged. But Rudy Giuliani's lie about prostate cancer survival rates....not so much discussed at all. Why isn't his lie a major political scandel. It says alot about his character.