Tim Murphy, Mother Jones
When the National Republican Senatorial Committee unleashed a new attack ad against Sen. Jon Tester last fall, it stuck to a familiar template—tie him to the president. As a narrator portrayed the rural lawmaker as a consummate Washington insider, an image of the Montana Democrat patting President Obama on the shoulder flashed across the screen. The Tester camp was predictably outraged, but not for the reasons you might think: Its ire centered on a doctored photo of the senator, seeming to show him with a left hand bearing all five fingers. A childhood meat grinder accident in the...