The winner of November’s election may be the candidate whose nose has grown the least.

Let’s be candid: both of these candidates have had trouble with the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The lead editorial in today’s Washington Post takes Mrs. Clinton to task for her personal email account and the Inspector General’s report criticizing her practices. The second Post editorial is about Trump’s latest (as of this writing anyway) lies about his fund-raising for veterans (in place of his participating in a Fox News debate, you’ll recall) and his lying about his own donation of $1 million to that cause which came only after Post reporters stared looking into what donations actually took place.

Mrs. Clinton has parsed her words, though probably not much worse than most political candidates have. Mr. Trump doesn’t parse words. He lies. And he spite of that head of hair he has -- he lies baldly.

Some of his supporters say that’s him “telling it like it is.” But it isn’t. He lies.

He lies about funding his own campaign. He’s now raising money for the general election but sidesteps his boast to fund his own campaign by saying he’s just raising money for the party. But he’s raising money for the party to fund his campaign, and others, and he gets some of the money he’s raising. He loaned his primary campaign money that could be paid back when the money starts rolling in for the general, or after.

He lies about banning all Muslims from this country; now he says that there will be exceptions.

He lies about eliminating the deficit in eight years. Okay, let’s put that in the category of “little fibs” most candidates tell – promises they wished they could keep, but know they can’t.  

He lies about his taxes. He says "there's not to learn" from his returns. But there is plenty to learn, it's just things he doesn't want anyone to know. Like what his true charitable giving is; what his true tax rate is; how he avoided paying taxes.

Hell, he even liked about not watching Fox News anymore.  He admitted to Megan Kelly that he still was watching it even though he, in a(nother) fit of pique against the "slimy" media,  he had stopped in protest over Megan Kelly. He lies about building a beautiful wall to keep Mexicans out – but he knows that will never happen. Fact is, his supporters know that too.

He lies about putting a 45 percent tariff on exports from China. He said he never said such a thing…but he did.

And there are hundreds of more lies. Almost too many to track -- but there are people keeping track.

The issue is, none of his lies have hurt him so far. When someone says he lies he says, sometimes, that no, he just changed his mind. Or, oh yeah, well lying Ted lies more and so does Crooked Hillary. I guess Low Energy Jeb never had the energy to lie, or he would have.

The point is we have two flawed, to use a too light term, candidates about to lead our two major parties into the November elections. Their unfavorable numbers challenge each other – both far over 50 percent, the highest ever heading into a presidential election.

As the general election unfolds, we’ll hear more about Hillary’s emails; Bill’s womanizing; unfortunately we’ll hear about Vince Foster, a former Bill aide who committed suicide back during the Clinton Administration and who conspiracy theorists like to say was really killed by the Clintons. We’ll hear about Trump making “deals” that took advantage of the working American he claims to be championing, that helped him avoid millions in taxes;  about his involvement with the Mob when it came to his casinos (tangent: Hillary does make a fair point – how do you bankrupt a casino???). And about more than we can even imagine today.

In other words if you thought this primary election was a doozy, wait until you see the Trump Lie Machine go against the Clinton Echo Chamber.

Hillary Clinton has drawn about the only Republican candidate she could easily beat this year – Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has drawn about the only Democratic candidate he could easily beat this year – Hillary Clinton.

For all the years each of us has had to choose between the lesser of two evils for president, this year takes the cake.

Both candidates’ negative ratings are in the stratosphere. Normally you can pretty reliably predict who’s going to win if either candidate has more than a 50 percent unfavorable rating.  This year, each is well over 50 percent and Trump is past 60 percent. Of course the general election campaign hasn't started yet. Each can add to their unfavorability before the election.

People say Hillary lies, cheats and steals. Other say Trump is unfit and doesn’t have the temperament to be president. Oh, and he lies too.

You choose.

I’ve spoken to some Republican friends who are not fans of Trump. But, they will vote for him because they hate the Clintons. Other Republican friends won’t vote for Trump and are looking for a third-party alternative, like Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. The question about voting for a third-party candidate or writing in someone is – while it may be a vote against Hillary and Donald, is it a vote for something because no third-party is going to win the presidency? I have Democratic friends who will vote for Hillary while holding their noses. What a year.

At best, a third party, in its wildest imaginings, could throw the election into the House of Representatives and guess who you’d get then? Since Republicans are in the majority, you get Donald Trump. So you may as well choose and be part of the problem, I mean solution.

So is a third-party or write-in vote the answer? It may soothe your conscience that you didn’t vote for Hillary or Trump, but you probably then really voted for both of them.

It is a most difficult year to make up one’s mind. And it’s a most important year to make up one’s mind.

While some argue the Supreme Court is at stake, does anyone trust that Trump would name a conservative justice? The question there really is, can you trust Donald Trump who has lied time and time again? We know Hillary will name liberal justices. Do you vote for Donald, take an unfit candidate and a hope that he’ll appoint conservatives? Or do you take Hillary an untrustworthy candidate and accept liberal justices?

A horrible choice, but a choice we need to make because that’s, well, our choice.

I served on the staff of two Republican presidents, one Republican Cabinet member and four Republican National chairmen, as a Republican myself. Today, I quit the Republican Party and registered as an Independent (technically, "unenrolled" as they call it in Massachusetts).

Why? Donald Trump may think he’s attracting more to the Republican Party but he also is pushing many from the party. I also question how many of his crossover voters in the primaries are actually registering with the GOP – I’m guessing not many. He claims to be expanding the party. He’s not but there are millions of voters drawn to him. He is a candidate of convenience for them. A candidate with whom to place their anger and their hopes.

And the GOP is a party of convenience for him. He is saying it would be nice if the party were unified behind him, but he says that isn’t necessary for him to win. Then why did you seek its nomination? The GOP for him is not unlike how he has treated women through his life – use them and lose them and, in his rhetoric, abuse them. Just as he’s doing to the GOP.

Trump is a false prophet. He will not – cannot – keep the promises he’s making. As soon as he became the presumptive nominee, he began breaking those promises – backing off his own tax plan, backing off self-funding his campaign, backing off his opposition to Super PACs (because now he has one) and backing off his opposition to a rise in the minimum wage.  And that was just one day last week. He can do that without paying a price, apparently, because his supporters believe he “tells it like it is.” Doesn’t matter if what he told you yesterday is the direct opposite of what he is saying today and who knows what he’ll say tomorrow?
 
As Catherine Rampell said in the Washington Post – Trump is the most politician-y politician out there. He says what some want to hear, and then says the opposite the next day. I cannot be a member of a party whose presumed nominee is ignorant of the Constitution, doesn’t study the issues, picks on opponents based on their size, their personality – anything but their positions on policy or their vast more experience than he has to be president.  He will not all of a sudden become presidential – it’s not in the head of a narcissist to change who he is.

Trump is unfit to be president.

He says he admires Putin and the Chinese Politburo but he has disdain for those who have preceded him as the party’s presidential nominee. He promises to use the presidency against businesses who dare to leave our borders. He will start a trade war rather than do the hard work of negotiating with our trading partners and explaining how trade works to his constituents. He threatens his opponents, encourages his supporters to physically hurt his detractors. A key supporter and friend of his threatened anyone who opposes him at the convention with revealing their room numbers so Trump’s vigilantes can pay them a visit. He threatens party donors, the press, and the speaker of the house, anyone who dares speak against him or, as he puts it, "be nice to me."

He wants to roll back the First Amendment so he can go after reporters he doesn’t like. He says he wants to restructure the country’s debt; negotiate with our debt-holders for a lower interest rate, just as he has done with his many businesses – run up the debt, then run out on the debt. In other words destroy the full faith and credit reputation of America that has existed since Alexander Hamilton’s days. And, by the way, the result would be to destroy the U.S. and the world’s economy. But, fear not, tomorrow he’ll ignore what he said last week. Making him the most inconsistent, lying candidate in our history – and that’s quite a ladder to climb.

He’s not the only reason I left the party but he is the catalyst. The after-Trump – win or lose --won’t be pretty.
 
If he wins, we will have a president whose word you cannot trust because he flip flops from beginning of a speech to the end of the same speech. If he loses, the GOP returns to a battle of the righest-wing people against more reasonable people. And the rightist- wing people will feel even more emboldened to keep this country from any progress because, once again, they will argue that the party lost because it didn’t nominate a “true conservative” which, in their minds, is defined as someone who wants to stop progress in this country or push the country backwards rather than find middle ground with their political opponents. I’ve had it with that gridlock and insanity. (And that's not to let the Democrats off the hook.)
 
Despite my many years of working for the party and its elected officials, no one will lament my leaving the party. In fact, few will even notice. But I didn’t quit to be noticed. I quit because I like to think I have some integrity and I have beliefs in a set of principles (not entirely conservative principles) that have been abandoned by the Republican Party. I didn’t have to agree with the party all of the time but I want to agree with it some of the time. I can’t agree with Trumpism or be a Trumpet, or whatever the cute name is that hides the true, ugly views of this man.

I have huge respect for George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham and others for saying they will not endorse Trump. I also have great respect for Paul Ryan for withholding support for Trump, something Trump apparently sees not as an issue to try to fix but as another opportunity to say, I’ll meet with him, but maybe he shouldn’t chair the convention either. That’s the fellow who calls himself a “uniter.”

I can’t say who I’ll vote for yet. Part of me says that it has to be Hillary because a vote for anyone else is a vote against Trump, but no one but the Democrat can beat him.  So a vote for a third party is basically a vote for Hillary. I’d rather she have the nuclear codes in her hands than Trump having them.  And voting seems to be often to choose the lesser of evils, and the evils are huge in this election. But that’s a decision for another day.

I am grateful and proud of all the work I did while in politics and government. Each person I worked for I was proud to work for. I spoke my mind when I didn’t agree with things and was always heard, if not agreed with. I worked with many people I have deep respect for.

 I, as many like me, have endured insults from those who think that everyone in the party thinks alike and believes the same things. A pox on those people for being ignorant and not understanding that each major party includes people who believe different things. As one former boss put it, a “big tent” that could have under it many views.

Just because I was a registered Republican doesn’t mean I was anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-gay marriage and a bigot, I don’t “hate” because of someone’s ethnicity or religious beliefs or sexual orientation. I do believe in small government, in a strong defense, especially in these uncertain times; and I believe in keeping taxes low. I’ve always been an economic conservative but more liberal on social issues. Folks like me still exist but we are a dying breed – we do not live on the extremes of the political spectrum but in the middle, where the real life and challenges of the American people exist.

But I do reject the party’s constant march to the far right and I do reject the embrace I’m witnessing of Donald Trump, a despicable human being and the most unqualified person a major party ever nominated to be president.

Most importantly, I couldn’t look my grandchildren in the eye and say I tried to leave them a better world by being a member of a party that would nominate Donald Trump.
 

That old horror movie scene is beginning to play out in the “evolution” of Donald Trump. Headline in the Washington Post this morning: “Trump turns to general election and away from past positions.”

It's the change in "role" his new advisor, Paul Manfort, told the Republican National Committee was coming. It has arrived, despite Trump’s claims that Manafort was wrong when he said it and he wasn't changing who he is.
 
So we now are learning that Trump will raise money for his campaign and not be self-funding the general election. That was one of his claims to being a non-politician and a theme that played strongly with his millions of supporters – “he tells it like it is” and “isn’t a politician,”  they tell reporters and pollsters.

He’s also put one of his dreaded hedge fund managers in charge of his fund raising. This guy also spent 17 years working for Goldman Sachs -- the horrible people who gave Hillary Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few speeches. He has vilified “those” people for a year but now one of “those” people will be raising a billion dollars for  him. 

So much for self-funding. To self-fund, the man who claims to be worth $10 billion says, would mean having to sell “a couple of buildings” and  it seems his greed for maintaining his family wealth is stronger than his desire to keep his promise to his supporters. Trump has railed against these big donors and bundlers, but that was the plot line for last week’s reality show. This week, the plot changes.

There also is a super PAC being set up for him and old GOP hand Ed Rollins is advising it. And, just like other candidates who say they have “nothing” to do with these PACs (It’s against the law for the campaigns to coordinate with the PACs) Trump is praising to the  highest Rollins’ abilities. “I know that people maybe like me and they form a super PAC, but I have nothing to do with it,” he told NBC Nightly News – the same type of quote other politicians make when talking about Super PACs that they (wink, wink) have nothing to do with and no say in. Rollins is a very experienced strategist whose resume claims, among many other achievements, master-minding Ronald Reagan's re-election landslide in 1984.

Trump also is backing away from the tax plan he proposed last fall with major tax cuts for the rich and is saying he’s open to raising the minimum wage, something he opposed not long again. This evolution in his positions all within just 72 hours of his becoming the presumptive GOP nominee. Pray tell what will next week bring?

He is gaining support among GOP officials and support is hardening against him by others, notably the former presidents’ Bush, his former primary opponent Sen. Lindsay Graham, several Congressmen and the very public hesitation to endorse him by the Speaker of the House.

He’s also started talking about restructuring the national debt in ways that likely would destroy several economies, including our own. That more than 200-year-old standard that the U.S. has to honor its debts would be blown up if Trumps handles the public money the way he handles his businesses’ money –  meaning playing footsies with discount rates to make money as he has done with his real estate “deals.”

His “transition” to new positions is coming faster than I anticipated. But maybe he’s calculating that he needs to change early and often to spin his supporters into believing he’s still on their side. I don’t see how he backs off his Wall or his Muslim-barring policy or his comments about women, Jews, and others, but we’ll see. In the mind of Donald Trump, anything can be rationalized. Or lied about.

The question is will his millions of supporters buy it. Because if they leave him, what’s he got?