"Education" and the effects of distoring the facts

The following ad is the one of the newest ads put out by the McCain campaign titled "Education"


According to an article in today's New York Times this ad severely distorts the facts of Obama's previous voting history and his views on sex education. While I am not making a judgment call on Mr. Obama's views, I do believe that this is a good example of exactly what we were talking about in class and what the professor explains in one of his posts. We do not know, and may never know, the effects that the spreading of these distorted facts (assuming they are as the NYT reports) will have on the election, but it is still important to note.

Additionally, this can fit right in with the debate over the use of any kind of distortion in campaign ads (as was noted by the professor), is this kind of distortion and manipulation the same as what the Obama campaign has been doing to highlight Mr. McCain's age? In my opinion the tactic used by the McCain campaign is much worse (although the Obama campaign's tactic is still bad), because this is not using editing techniques of actual footage in order to portray the picture in a different way, this (again assuming the NYT is accurate) is plain ordinary lying.