Behind campaign ads: What’s true and what’s not

President Barack Obama makes a point during a town meeting, Monday, July 16, 2012, at Music Hall in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

That Obama TV ad where a steelworker implies his wife’s death from cancer was because Romney yanked their health insurance.

Or the Romney ad that says the president is gutting the work requirements from welfare.

Or the Obama ad implying Mitt Romney is hiding tax returns showing he paid much less than he lets on.

How do you know if any of it is true? How about a political truth app?

CBS correspondent Barry Bagnato found a couple of them:

“Jennifer Hollett is co-founder of Super Pac App, a free app about to be launched to help voters separate fact from fiction,” says Bagnato.

“Pull out your iPhone, fire up our app, hold it to the TV set. You’ll find out who’s behind it, how much money is behind it, more information on the claims being made,” says Hollett.

“A new website, ReactVid.com, rates claims from ads as true, false, or ambiguous, and provides links for you to fact-check yourself,” says Bagnato.

Yes, that’s what we all want to know, the truth behind the claims. But in fact, that’s only what we say we want to know.

There are several books – my favorite is one called “The Believing Brain” by Michael Shermer – which demonstrates that we tend to believe stuff without knowing or even caring why. And despite the familiar retort that says “facts are stubborn things”, the fact is that facts are malleable. In fact, it is beliefs that are the stubborn things.

Politics is becoming less and less about trying to persuade people to change their minds and more and more about turning out the voters who already like you, while discouraging or turning away the voters who don’t like you.

What’s actually true has very little to do with it.

Listen to today’s Dave Ross commentary: