Kevin Drum decides to take a look at the question: who lies more, and more significantly? Bush or Kerry?
Bush: 18 lies, total score of 118.
Kerry: 10 lies, total score of 60.
Perhaps more important than the total score, though, is the number of serious lies. Bush had 7 serious lies (those with a score of 9 or above) while Kerry had only one.
In other words, Bush rather clearly lied more than Kerry and lied more seriously than Kerry. I did my best to apply the same rigor to both candidates, but even with a different formula and different scoring, it's hard to see how Bush wouldn't come out as seriously more deceptive than Kerry. As Halperin said, deception seems to be central to George Bush's campaign while it's basically peripheral to John Kerry's.
And the Economist polls a bunch of economists, and finds that
...Mr Bush's policies win low marks. More than 70% of the 56 professors who responded to our survey rate Mr Bush's first-term economic policies as bad or very bad. Fewer than 20% give positive marks to Mr Bush's second-term economic agenda, and almost six out of ten disapproved. Mr Kerry hardly got rave reviews either, but his economic plan still fared better than the president's did. In all, four out of ten professors rated Mr Kerry's economic plan as good or very good, but 27% gave it negative scores.
The only area where Bush rated higher was his in positions on trade and outsourcing.
