WASHINGTON WATCH: WHEN A LIE IS AS GOOD AS THE TRUTH

Please explain.

In Oklahoma, David Perryman, the Democratic candidate for an open House seat, resorts to racist tactics to try to defeat his Republican opponent. In an inflammatory television commercial Perryman features a 20-year-old photograph of J.C. Watts, a former University of Oklahoma football star and the first African American to hold statewide office there. The picture, taken from Watts Eufala High School yearbook, shows a young man sporting a giant Afro. It is an attempt to link Watts, a conservative Christian, to black militancy in the 1970s. While Watts responds with the kind of good humor that Oklahoma voters have come to know from him, the watchdog national media remain uncharacteristically silent. Apparently, only Republicans can be guilty of racist themes.

In Virginia, a Democratic party phone bank busily calls voters to link Republican senatorial candidate Ollie North with former presidential candidate and longtime Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. The Democratic callers inform potential voters that North campaigned for Duke and has the same racist agenda. In truth, North specifically campaigned against David Duke prominently, and more than once. When incumbent Sen. Chuck Robb admits that he approved the slanderous phone bank tactics and offers no apology, North charges Robb with using African American voters as pawns in the political process. The Washington Post charges North not Robb with injecting race into the contest.

In Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, President Clinton blasts Republicans for having a secret plan to gut Social Security. The Republicans will devastate Social Security and senior citizens. Say no to their radical attacks. It is the same venomous, McCarthyist tactic that Tip ONeil used in 1982 to great success against Ronald Reagan. But, as the record over the past two years plainly shows, it is the Clinton administration that has been developing a plan to tax Social Security benefits, freeze cost-of-living adjustments and change the eligibility age. Is Clintons desperate last-minute attempt to salvage the careers of several imperiled Democratic politicians described as the cynical misleading of the American people that it is? Not if you work for the New York Times. To them, it is spirited, full-throated campaigning. Indeed, Clinton even gains plaudits for his charm. Meanwhile, Newsweek, Time, The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, The New York Times and all four television networks (counting CNN but not Fox) conduct hit pieces on House Republican whip Newt Gingrich, describing him as power-hungry, hypocritical and mad as hell. In one of the milder descriptions, Time calls Gingrich a man willing to stick out his tongue at some venerable American institutions ... a sort of establishment guerrilla, attacking the institutions he badly wants to lead. Conveniently, the news reports appear just as the Democratic National Committee begins TV commercials across the nation demonizing Gingrich and his fellow Republicans Contract With America. What is clear is that in the final two weeks before an election the national media kick into full gear to assist those candidates who most closely reflect their own big-government thinking and destroy those who dont. If such a relentless drive were confined to editorial pages and political discussion programs, that would be one thing. But the fact is it is not. No wonder only the national media consistently get lower marks than Congress from the American people.

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An important note: the one-sidedness of media coverage doesnt absolve Republicans from their own slime-ball tactics. Too many of them have joined their opponents in disgraceful issue-distortion and character assassination. Nowhere is this more true than in Californias U.S. Senate race.

In a new low for American political campaigns, matched in sheer audacity only by Bill Clintons unsubstantiated attack upon a make-believe George Bush mistress two years ago, Republican millionaire Michael Huffington admitted this week that several charges against Democrat incumbent Diane Feinstein were based only on rumors. Asked if he would have his campaign staff substantiate the charges or withdraw them, Huffington said no, indicating that winning was more important to him than anything else. It is just such an attitude, common in both parties this year, that threatens to leave all of us losers in the long run.

Jon K. Rust is a Washington-based writer for the Southeast Missourian.