Here’s Robert Reich again, almost sputtering with indignation regarding Mitt Romney’s incessant lying on the campaign trail:

…So Romney’s lying machine is working.

But what does all this tell us about the man who is running this lying machine? (Or if Romney’s not running it, what does it tell us about a man who would select the people who are?)

We knew he was a cypher – that he’ll say and do whatever is expedient, change positions like a chameleon, eschew any core principles.

Yet resorting to outright lies – and organizing a presidential campaign around a series of lies – reveals a whole new level of cynicism, a profound disdain for what remains of civility in public life, and a disrespect of the democratic process.

The question is whether someone who is willing to resort to such calculated lies, and build a campaign machine around them, can be worthy of the public’s trust with the most powerful office in the world…

Is Reich being disingenuous, or merely naive? He contradicts himself by describing Romney as a cypher but then professing to be shocked by the cypher’s “outright lies” and “disrespect of the democratic process.” What does he expect of the Romneybot, a figurehead for a “campaign machine” fueled by billionaire fascists and headed by Karl Rove, who makes Joseph Goebbels look like a paragon of ethics?

Also, Reich is flat-out wrong when he states that the mainstream media has called attention to Romney’s “whoppers.” The MSN will occasionally correct a Romney lie, but always as an afterthought, and always in the small print. If the media was doing its job, reporters and editors would smack Romney down, unambiguously, every time he distorted or completely misrepresented his record, or his opponent’s. But this won’t happen because the major media venues, where the “he said/she said” approach to journalism is enforced, are owned by the sort of people who hobnob with the Romneys of the world.

If The New York Times, the TV networks, NPR, et al., were doing their job, they’d present stories updating Romney’s biggest lies, from lists such as the one compiled by Daily Koz. A sample:

Here is Romney’s outrageous lie that Obama has increased the national debt more than all other presidents combined: http://romneytheliar.blogspot.com/…

Here is Romney’s lie about his plans to give huge tax cuts to people like himself:
http://romneytheliar.blogspot.com/…

Here is Romney’s infuriating lie about President Obama’s so-called “Apology Tour”: http://romneytheliar.blogspot.com/…

But they choose not to. There is something pathetic about Reich’s and the media’s — not to mention Barack Obama’s — unwillingness to take for granted the perfidy of those who run the GOP machine, and their reluctance to vigorously fight the machine as it cranks out lies nonstop.

It’s as if Reich is confused and disappointed, and passively waiting for voters to wake up to the GOP’s rotten agenda on their own.

Question for those who still find merit in choosing the lesser of two evils: Are (relatively) good guys really any good if they don’t have the balls to do battle with the bad?