Lately, my mind keeps going back to the Bush/Gore election and all the accusations by Bush supporters that Al Gore was a "congenital liar." That was the term — one most of the same people have flung at Hillary Clinton. A lot of them seemed to think the word "congenital" meant "extreme" while others used it to suggest that Al (or Hillary) had some mental illness that forced them to speak lies to no particular advantage.
My problem with calling politicians liars is that people only do it to those they wish they see lose. Everyone running for public office says things that aren't technically true. Sites like Politifact have examples for everyone and you can really find examples when you're trying hard to discredit someone. Gore didn't say "I invented the Internet" — he didn't use the word "invented" at all when he said what got misquoted into that — but a lot of folks thought the misquote was inarguable proof he was a serial fibber.
So I don't really know what to make of certain acquaintances who dismissed Gore as a liar but are quite enthusiastic about voting for Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and others who unabashedly say things happened that no one thinks happened. Trump says, "I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering" as the World Trade Center collapsed. Carson says he "didn't have an involvement with" the nutritional supplement company, Mannatech. Fiorina says, "92% of the jobs lost during Barack Obama's first term belonged to women" and that she saw an abortion in a video that no one else can locate. There are other examples from them and other candidates of both parties.
I can excuse some things as misunderstandings or garbled phrasing. When Carson talks about Thomas Jefferson writing the Constitution, that seems like a factual error and/or maybe a case of misspeaking. A factual error isn't a lie unless you double-down on it and insist it's so, no matter what anyone says. A misspeak isn't a lie any more than a typographical error is a lie.
I could almost respect someone who said, "Much of what Donald Trump says is lies and misrepresentation but I'm going to vote for him in spite of that." I think that's how a lot of us feel about the people for whom we wind up casting ballots. I sure can't defend that Obama line about keeping your doctor or some of his claims of government transparency.
Don't give your guy a pass when he makes up some bogus anecdote that cues applause in a political speech. Seems to me that if you only care about The Truth when you can use it as a weapon against an opponent, you really don't care about The Truth at all.