My first city editor, the estimable Jim Thornton at The Columbus Ledger in Columbus, Ga., eventually became a journalism professor. Doing counseling one day, a young student came to him and told him she wanted to move from newspaper journalism to public relations. Jim’s response to her, in his South Alabama accent was, “Honey, you don’t want to lie for a livin’.”

That popped back into my head just now when I read a post about Beltway Bob, N.C. State’s Robert Gibbs, who flacks for President Obama. At a press conference today he claimed August had not been a bad month for his boss. By any objective analysis, August has been disastrous for President Obama and his plan for a government takeover of health care. Too bad Gibbs couldn’t have been counseled by Jim Thornton. He might have saved himself a lot of embarrassment.