One of the most frustrating problems with political dialogue is the tendency for dishonest rhetoric. Disingenous arguments, which are emotionally persuasive but are intellectually dishonest undermine the system, distorting the true issues.

Politicians have an incentive to distort and mistate the truth because emotionally charged, rhetorically dishonest arguments are often more effective in provoking the public than logical, well reasoned arguments. However, such dishonest dialogue hurts us all in the long run.

We should have a web-site which rates the statements of politicians by how intellectually honest their statements are. Politicians would get an overall "honesty rating." Each statement would get a score, and a detailed explanation why it is considered intellectually honest or dishonest. There would be a review process in case of mistake in the ratings, and the entire system would be completely transparent.

Ratings would only be reserved for statements which cross a fairly high threshold of intellectual dishonesty, in order to make this manageable.

The web-site would be bipartisan, run by a team of Democrats, Republicans, and others who are more interested in an honest political dialogue than self-serving rhetoric which distorts the issues.

Imagine the power of a political commercial which said, "Senator X has been ranked the #1 most dishonest politician for the last 3 year straight by the bi-partisan political honesty organization". This would create pressure on politicians to be intellectually honest, and counter the "cheap shot" benefit that politicians get from dishonest speech.

We might also expand this to pundits and political commentators who also engage in this type of destructive dialogue.

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