Obama Obama Obama

Obama as Muslim and the new rules of spin | Michael Tomasky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The New Yorker magazine's controversial cover of 21 July 2008 by artist Barry Blitt, satirically depicting the then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a Muslim and his wife Michelle as a terrorist; a new poll shows a growing number of Americans actually believe the president is indeed Muslim. Photograph: AP/New Yorker

It doesn't surprise me, really, that the number of Americans believing Barack Obama is a Muslim has gone up in 14 months from 11% to 18%, according to a survey out today from Pew (Time magazine got 24% in another poll released today).

Here we have a case where a group of people is quite vocally arguing that he is, while no one is bothering to argue the opposite case, that he isn't. There are two reasons for this. First, it's just self-evident to those of us who believe (know) he's not a Muslim that he's not a Muslim. As Colin Powell admirably said once, not that there would be anything wrong with that; but it just isn't the case. So why argue the point? Does one who believes the sun rises in the east have to run around arguing the point? No. Because it's just reality.

The second reason is more problematic, because here, the doubter might say, OK, if he's Christian, what church did he go to? Oops. There's an answer to that question, but it too is politically problematic, involving as it does old Reverend Wright, so for the doubters, that's not a particularly reassuring answer.

But the real problem is that you have vocal people out there arguing that he's a Muslim, and no one countering it, so naturally more people are going to listen. If a lie is going unanswered, it will gather adherents.

It puts Obama's defenders in a spot, because having to launch a group called something like obamaisachristian.com is kind of pathetic and will just generate a bunch of news stories about how strange it is that it's come to this; and those stories in turn, the mere existence of them, will nourish the lie.

(By the way, and proving my point, obamaisachristian.com is not registered! You can order it right now if you like, and add obamaisachristian.co.uk for an extra $38 for two years.)

This creates a quandary for Democrats and liberals. Do you bother to answer out-and-out lies? Traditionally, no. One of the first things they teach you at spin school is to ignore outlandish things because they're not true and they'll go away. And, time was, Democrats and Republicans both stretched the truth more or equally to suit their arguments. Well, Republicans were more demagogic, because the Republican base has for decades been more white and Middle-American and God-fearing, and so getting them suspicious of foreigners and blacks and communists and so on has tended to work quite well. But Democrats were guilty of their embellishments, too. And both sides, with a few exceptions like Joe McCarthy, and Dixiecrat segregationists, tried to stay more or less within the solar system of truth.

But now you have a side that just lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. And if people will say anything, you have to counter it. It seems insane. It's the equivalent of someone having to start a foundation dedicated to the idea that the earth is round, or that it is, in fact, 4.5bn years old. But sadly, we have reached the point in this country where we have to re-argue these very basic facts about life.

Democrats still don't understand this. In the current case, there's probably not much to be done: the 18% who think he's Muslim won't be voting for him anyway. But – and this should be the work of some liberal foundation – the restatement of basic principles about American civic life, things that were generally agreed upon in the 1970s but have been under attack ever since, is very much needed these days.