How to Listen to Politicians: Phil Hendrie was doing a great bit yesterday on how to read the news. I won't repeat all that he said here, but here's a hint: If you're coming to the same conclusion that the person who wrote the article did, you're not reading it right.

In that same spirit, I'd like to present how to listen to politicians. It's basically an extention of an idea first put out by Dave Barry on how to listen to advertisers. Confused yet? Don't be. Here we go.

If Coke and Pepsi are spending tons of money trying to convince you that one will make you infinitely hipper than the other, or that the difference in taste is so enormous that people will look at you like someone who drinks toxic waste if you drink the wrong one, than they're probably both just fizzy sugar water.

If KFC is launching a new advertising campaign that insists that fried chicken is good healthy eating because it won't give you a heart attack nearly as fast as a Whopper, it's probably a whopper they're telling you.

The exact same thing works with politicians. You can take pretty much anything they're trying really, really hard to convince you of, and assume the opposite is true.

This doesn't mean you have to disbelieve everything they say. Not everything that comes out of every politician's mouth is a lie. What should set off the five alarm bells is when they're trying really, really hard to convince you of something.

Of course, not even this strategy works all the time, because something they're telling the truth, but having to work real hard at explaining something to you, because somebody else already "convinced" you of something else.

So you just have to watch whether they're explaining something to you, or trying to convince you of something.

Let me give you an example.

Think about a time where somebody was saying something bad or spreading some gossip about you. Remember how it felt like everybody believed it, right off the bat, even though it wasn't true? Because even though they had no evidence, it just felt right that you should have done that. They were able to "convince" everybody it was true. "That's so like him, isn't it?" or "I can totally see her doing that."

And you were left having to explain what really happened, but since your explanation was dull and boring, it didn't have the power to ever really fully overcome the "convincing" that took place in everybody's mind.

It's the same way with politics. Politicians (or even filmmakers, Michael Moore has mastered this, and I respect him for his talents) are able to convince you of something in such a way that even when the reality is explained to you, the justifications for the accusation or position are still wedged in your mind strongly enough to nearly overpower the facts.

Explanations can usually be taken at face value.

However, if the other politician responds by trying to "convince you" about why the first person is wrong, then he's probably wrong as well, and the reality probably sits somewhere in between the two arguments.

You can see why I have to chuckle whenever someone makes a derisive comment like, "He just tried to explain it away," as if "having some explaining to do," were tantamount to being guilty.

In reality, we should probably associate the phrase, "he made a passioned, emotional plea," with the idea that somebody doesn't have a leg to stand on. At least the first guy has an explanation. The second guy is just trying to make us want to believe him.

This is a fairly simplistic system, but I think it will work pretty well in your Lie Detector arsenal.