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Politicians and lies

The New Neo Posted on by

The title of this article by Holman Jenkins intrigued me: “Politicians Never Lied Before Trump,” and so I clicked on it. I was almost certain that the title was sarcastic—of course politicians lie often, and have done so since time immemorial—and sure enough, the title was indeed meant as sarcasm.

But that discussion was just the lead-in; the rest of the piece was about the wall. But I want to talk about the lies right now, not the wall.

It seems completely obvious to me that one of the most common activities of politicians is to lie. To some extent, politics almost demands it, depending on how one defines “lie.” Is a bragging exaggeration a lie? Is an optimistic promise a lie? How exaggerated does it have to be before it becomes one, rather than mere hyperbole?

Opinions are not lies, as long as the speaker really believes what he or she says (which is not always the case in politics or in life). Opinions can be incorrect, they can be based on faulty reasoning or faulty information, but as long as they are sincere you can’t call them lies. And yet so-called “fact checkers” do so on a daily basis.

Facts are facts, but sometimes competing information (Kellyanne Conway’s much-maligned “alternative facts”) is out there and it can be very difficult to ascertain what’s correct and what’s incorrect. So politicians constantly argue by citing one fact or another, or one statistic or another, that bolsters their own point of view. That’s only a lie if the facts are obviously wrong or made up.

Some politicians lie to brag—that’s one of Trump’s favorite types of lie. Some lie to fool the American people about policy, its motives or its effects—that’s Obama’s favorite kind of lie, and he did it very smoothly. I consider the latter type of lie far more pernicious for a politician to tell than the former type.

And some politicians lie about themselves—not just to brag, but about something much deeper: their aims and their plans for the country. Obama again.

One of the most famous supposed lies in recent years was the “Bush lied about WMDs” accusation. But there has never been any convincing evidence that he actually lied, although there is very convincing evidence that he was mistaken and/or misled. But that doesn’t stop the meme that he lied, which is in itself a lie if and only if the person who is espousing it thinks it’s actually highly unlikely to be true.

I often hear that Trump lies far more than any other president. That’s not my perception, unless you count as lies a lot of things that aren’t, and/or a lot of things that are minor and inconsequential. The people who keep telling me that Trump lies so much are astounded and offended if I try to say that Obama lied as well; they just don’t see it that way. One can go to charts listing the lies of either or both to prove a point, but of course the charts almost always (maybe even always) represent partisan efforts to make one or the other look worse (for example, see this critique of one of the Times’ efforts). And I’m not interested in sheer numbers—it’s the subject matter and import of the lie that matters, not the quantity.

Which leads me to the conclusion that Obama’s lies were far worse than Trump’s.

Comments

Politicians and lies — 50 Comments

  1. Trump exaggerates and says things for effect, like Mexico will pay for the wall. It may yet but it was a rhetorical device.

    Obama, one the other hand, lied about Obamacare many times and knew he was lying.

    Bill Clinton changed policies and told lies about his sexual exploits, which are mostly forgiven by his fans. Hillary was a much worse liar. She lied to the families of the men killed at Benghazi, then lied ABOUT the families.

    Bush lied about his drunk driving. Iraq WMD was mostly to support Blair who used that as an excuse for Parliament.

    Bush I lied about raising taxes but probably meant it when he said it. After the Democrats pressured him to change (just as they are doing to Trump about the wall), he lied that they did not do so.

    Nixon lied about having as plan to end the Vietnam War.

    Johnson lied about Tonkin Gulf.

    Kennedy lied about the Bay of Pigs. No air support when he had promised it.

  2. I agree, Neo. Maybe this is why I enjoy reading your essays; I so often think you’ve got it right.

    The thing about Trump is that, all the bluster and bragging aside, he said he would do certain things and take certain policy approaches as president, and, within what can reasonably be done, he’s followed through on his promises.

    Obama, on the other hand, worked hard at pretending he wasn’t doing what he was doing and fooling people into thinking he wasn’t. That’s much more dangerous to the nation than some miscellaneous bragging about unimportant matters like crowd sizes.

  3. If the source for the “Trump lies” meme are members of an ideological gang whose motto has always been “No truth but socialist truth,” and whose basic socioeconomic agenda consists of legalized looting . . . well, consider the source.

  4. Mike K:

    Nixon did draw down the troops, and by the time he left office in August of 1974 they were gone. The last American troops left in March of 1973.

    As for the Gulf of Tonkin, please see this.

  5. Regarding the Iraqi WMDs, I have a theory. The way Saddam Hussein acted, he thought he had them as well to attack the US forces. If the scientists working on them kept telling Saddam they did exist, a spy in his cabinet could have relayed this information.

    Therefore, both sides could believe there were WMDs and both still be wrong. Saying there were would not be a lie if you don’t know the actuality.

    For me, a lie happens if you know something and deceive someone about it. Passing on false info is only a lie if you know or suspect it’s incorrect.

  6. In the media’s case a more accurate description would be:

    ‘Trump says things we disagree with but secretly know that a great many people agree with’

    That is very much true about illegal immigration.

  7. It’s hard now to remember some of those obscure Obamaisms. Who could blame his fans for not recalling You can keep your plan! You can keep your doctor! You will save $3,500 per family!

  8. “Which leads me to the conclusion that Obama’s lies were far worse than Trump’s.”

    Now Boss you know that’s gonna make Manju cranky.
    😉

  9. “If you can do it, it ain’t bragging” ~ Dizzy Dean

    “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” ~ Winston Churchill

    “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.” ~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

    “Don’t worry, Jim” Eisenhower responded. “If that question comes up, I’ll just confuse them.” ~ Dwight Eisenhower

    “The bombing starts in five minutes” ~ Ronald Reagan

    I’d say that more than 95% of accusations of lying are made because the writer couldn’t get “shithead” past his editor. The crux of the matter is whether a lie is consequential, and what are the consequences.

  11. John Guilfoyle:

    Ah, but Manju is never cranky. Manju is patience personified, coming here over and over with the talking points of the left and never tiring, never yelling. I don’t think he/she ever has even insulted anyone here, although I could be wrong on that.

  14. Trump brags and thus is prone to exaggerating. Obama flat out lies in order to deceive. I can put up with bragging because I can choose to not listen. Obama never deceived me, but I intensely dislike people who attempt to deceive me.

  15. Obama’s two most prominent policy initiatives were the ACA and the Iran deal. And in each case after they came to fruition one of his aides publicly boasted about deceiving America to get them through- Gruber and a Rhodes. Vastly more substantive and damaging than anything attributed to Trump.

  16. Nixon did draw down the troops, and by the time he left office in August of 1974 theey were gone. The last American troops left in March of 1973.

    Oh, I know but his “secret plan” was just trying to get a “decent interval.” The Vietnam War was lost when Kennedy and Lodge agreed to assassinate Diem. After that it was our war. I am not optimistic that it could have been won with Diem, in power but it would have been “their war.”

  17. President Kennedy and Ambassador Lodge agreed to allow the coup to move forward, but they very strongly presumed that the Diem family/clique would come out alive and just go into exile. The US administration was genuinely shocked and outraged with murder of Diem and his brother in that relatively obscure Catholic church in Cholon/Saigon where they had hoped to lay low and from there to eventually find refuge. Madame Nhu, Diem’s sister-in-law, famously said just after JFK’s assassination only months later, “the chickens have come home to roost” . Malcolm X used the exact same phrase to describe the US home front: either by coincidence or not.

  18. IMO, Obama’s most damaging lie, among many, was his stimulus plan. Remember it was going to be spent on “shovel ready” infrastructure projects. It was $787 billion of new spending, mostly to favorite Democrat constituencies and no infrastructure at all, which automatically became the new standard for the budget. That is how the government managed to add $8.6 trillion to the debt in 8 years. Extremely damaging, especially considering they managed to gut the military at the same time.

  20. First, to be a lie, the liar must know it to be untrue.

    Call me naive but why do politicians have to lie?

    Why not tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may?

    So the Left will condemn them? So what, ‘F’ em.

    So, it might well result in their not being reelected? So what. Are they there to serve the public or keep their job? Not that they need a job, since most are millionaires. So its ego and fear of being ostracized.

    Does Jordan Peterson lie? Thomas Sowell? neo? Where is it written that election to public office requires that one lie to their constituents? Isn’t it incredibly patronizing to assume that like children, the public can’t handle the truth and their illusions must be catered to?

    For once I’d like to see a politician consistently tell it like it is, lay it on the line every time and “give em hell” with no bluster, no braggadocio and utter unconcern for ‘hurt feelings’. And in the face of the reactive hate and condemnation, do it all again and again and again.

    Truer words were never spoken than in John 8:32: “The truth shall set them free”

  25. Nicolo Machiavelli was all about gaining and holding on to power, especially through manipulation and fear. Yes, many perhaps most politicians are in it for the power, which just confirms its about ego for them. But nowhere is the acquisition of power defined in writing as a legal requirement for attaining political office.

    Insecure, immature people’s primary motivation is satiating egoistic sub-conscious fears. High political office entails the natural acquisition of power, which is obviously the foremost attraction for egoistic politicians. Thus, anyone who wants the job is at best problematic in being qualified for the job.

    Solution; qualified pool of applicants; random drawing among that pool for office with term limits.That’s obviously not an optimal method but how much better would it be than what we currently posses?

    “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.” William F. Buckley, Jr.

  26. Geoffrey Britain:

    Maybe it’s just a selection process—the ones who tell the truth don’t ordinarily get very far in politics.

    Jimmy Carter said he’d never lie to us. Did he lie to us? Maybe so, or maybe he was just in error. But he was a lousy president.

    I guess truth-telling isn’t enough.

  27. neo,

    “Maybe it’s just a selection process—the ones who tell the truth don’t ordinarily get very far in politics.”

    Probably so and, if so that is definitely a reflection upon the maturity of the electorate. Arguably, everything comes down to that. It also may well answer Franklin’s observation; “If you can keep it”

    I can’t off the top of my head ever remember at the time thinking that Carter was lying to us. My perception of Carter is that his foundational premises were/are gravely in error, which IMO led to his very poor performance and in that case, it was again IMO directly responsible for Reagan’s election.

    No truth telling is not the be all and end all of what is needed but it is the foundation for what is needed.

  28. Nicolo Machiavelli was all about gaining and holding on to power, especially through manipulation and fear. Yes, many perhaps most politicians are in it for the power, which just confirms its about ego for them. But nowhere is the acquisition of power defined in writing as a legal requirement for attaining political office.

    Allan Bloom has lectured extensively about Machiavelli. He plays a large role in The Closing; not as large as Nietzsche, but a more pivotal role nonetheless.

    For Bloom, Machiavelli is the link between the Ancients, Plato in particular, and modernity. He is “radically idealistic”, the founder of Liberal Democracy as we know it.

    But he was not concerned about the soul, or its salvation. This concern was the problem with Plato’s Republic which, by the way, also saw the need for lying: the Noble Lie.

    Machiavelli, like Plato, knew that lying was necessary in this world. Unlike Plato, he did not think that Reason must retreat into a world of ideals. It was the job of the philosopher, the virtuous, to practice deception…to embrace the irrational passions of man, particularly religious ones, in order to conquer them.

    Machiavelli ultimate goal was to overthrow the Ancient Regime and replace it with Reason. Plato had no such ambitions.

  29. Mike K:
    Have you read the book I talk about here?

    No, but I have read extensively about the same thing. I met Bing West, for example, whose book, “The Village” is about the Abrams concept. The Max Boot book about Lansdale does go into the early Vietnam experience. McNamara is the villain in Boot’s book and may be the villain in the war.

    I doubt Kennedy would have done any better but he might have had better political sense than Johnson. It is unknowable. As soon as Nixon was elected, the entire Democrat foreign policy apparatus flipped and joined the anti-war movement.

    Most of our social pathology today is derived from Vietnam and the anti-war movement. World War I is more basic to the west’s pathology but Vietnam is the recent example.

  30. Machiavelli thought that “It was the job of the philosopher, the virtuous, to practice deception…to embrace the irrational passions of man, particularly religious ones, in order to conquer them.”

    The enlightenment of mankind will not be achieved by deception.

  31. President Kennedy and Ambassador Lodge agreed to allow the coup to move forward, but they very strongly presumed that the Diem family/clique would come out alive and just go into exile.

    They may have as naifs in real foreign affairs but the Vietnamese generals, unknown to Kennedy and Lodge, were not about to let Diem, a real patriot, live.
    Kennedy put Lodge in Saigon as insurance against Lodge using Vietnam to attack Kennedy in 1964. He assumed Lodge would be the GOP candidate.

  32. I should add that Diem, according to Boot, was trying to implement some of Lansdale’s suggestions about getting out of Saigon and encouraging something like the Abrams safe village program, but in 1962.

    McNamara was blocking Lansdale’s access to Diem. Mac wanted numbers, like body counts.

  34. Pingback:Lies by Politicians – Tom Grey – Families, Freedom, Responsibility

  35. Trump is constantly bragging / exaggerating, not “lying”. Plus, anybody listening knows what he generally wants — fewer Muslim terrorists, for instance; “bigger” crowds than Obama had. There is no single agreed upon # for how many folks were at Obama’s inauguration or at Trump’s; the photos from when they were speaking showed huge crowds in both cases. Big in both cases, doesn’t matter too much if Obama, or Trump, had a few more.
    Yet the Dem press “lied” by printing pictures from 2 hours before Trump spoke and compared those pictures to Obama speaking — and then used these dishonest photos as proof that Trump lied.
    Most of “Trump’s lies” are actually words he’s said that are twisted by Dem to “he means this”, and the “this” is not fully true.
    Trump did not, ever, “ban Muslims”. The Dem media lies when it says he did, but many folk still claim he did this, and even that he lied about not doing it later. Similarly, the dishonest photo of a caged immigrant child, taken under Obama, was displayed as the fault of Trump.

    Obama’s lies were meant to deceive and pass policy which was known to have different effects than those claimed. Much much worse than Trump’s.

    In Iraq, Bush did believe that Saddam had WMDs/weapons that at least that violated the post-Kuwait invasion agreements. There were 16 UN Security Council resolutions condemning Saddam after the 1991 end of Gulf War I. Many Iraq generals thought that one of the other generals actually had the stuff. It was up to Saddam to “prove”, with documentation, that he didn’t have it — and he made sure it was never proven.
    Burden of proof was on Saddam.

    In Vietnam, Nixon “won” the war with the Paris Peace Accord in 1973. This was then violated by the Soviet supported N. Viet forces in 1975 after Dems took Congress (’74) and Dems refused to support the S. Viet forces; the Dems accepted losing the peace (and Carter ’76 accepted the Cambodian Killing Fields of 2 million, 25%, murdered).
    Wrong lesson – we can’t win in Asia.
    Alt lesson – we have to stay after a war until a functioning democracy or else we will lose the peace.
    Alt lesson 2 – the goal should be to get locals ready and able to defend themselves, and then we should be pulling out.

    Iraq – pulling out “too soon” was terrible, for allowing ISIS. The locals are slowly getting better, but they will remain unstable with or without US forces & deaths.
    Afghanistan – locals have too little interest in fighting (for enough human and women rights) to be worth staying; leave and come back if terrorists get too strong.

    Non-PC advice, find a ruthless anti-terrorist market oriented dictator (“authoritarian”) to kill his enemies and hold power with US financial (& tech?)support, but not needing troops.

    We can’t have honest politicians until the voters understand every policy has good and bad parts, with uncertain real world effects. Such honest politicians are not elected.

    I’m not sure how often top CEOs get selected for this either — Carly Fiorina promised HP would be much better after buying Compaq, over the objections of a Founder’s son (and huge stockholder). When this failed (because of huge market changes), she was fired. Were her promises lies? (IBM sold its PC business around then; both in reply to growth by Dell).

  36. “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes; and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

    — President-To-Be Walter Mondale, campaigning in 1984

  37. Tom Grey,

    EXTREMELY well said on all counts. These things cannot be said often enough.

    Thank you very, very much.

  38. Politicians must lie sometimes; during wartime, for instance. But a good politician must not be a clumsy liar, and should cultivate a reputation for honesty, against the day that he must tell a Godawful whopper with a straight face and expect people to believe it. That was one of the things I disliked about Bill Clinton: he was not only a liar, but a clumsy one. I didn’t hold his Vietnam War protests against him, as a lot of conservatives did (free speech and all that); what I objected to was that he said that he had not protested the War when there was documentation and surviving witnesses that proved he had not only protested the War (and in a foreign country to boot) but helped organize the protests. Clumsy.

  39. Nobody that voted for Trump believed he would force Mexico to write a check to pay for the wall. We all understood that Mexico would “pay” by some offset to the constant flow of funds from the US, such as remittances, and a reduction in the overall monies spent to support illegal aliens in this country. This isn’t hard.

  40. John C – Bill Clinton is not the only one who lies in the teeth of the evidence (his wife is just as bad). Obama was a smooth liar, but a liar nonetheless.

    Perhaps the bottom line is that most of us simply prefer liars whose actions support our own priorities and policies; we aren’t going to get a non-lying politician for the ample reasons listed above.

    The most important point, as noted, is: what are they lying about, and why?

    Personally, I would like all politicians and, everyone else, to be honest, so we have a chance to make rational decisions based on our theories of ideology and governance; otherwise, we might just as well toss coins in an election.
    If candidates don’t tell the truth, and we know they don’t, then we have to evaluate them on other grounds, hence the ubiquity of the feelz electorate (it didn’t appear out of the ether with Obama et al.).

    Given the realities of life, I would prefer a clumsy liar on the other side, because we can eventually smoke them out, and (contrariwise) a smooth one on our side.

  42. With Trump, it’s hard to tell if he’s lying, or making s**t up as he goes, or he believes a false or fake storyline so much that even a factual firestorm couldn’t dislodge the narrative rolling in his head. Either way, I don’t see how it helps anyone, wading through all his falsehoods, and falsehoods shouldn’t be a basis for sound policy.
    Obama did it differently. Sometimes he lied, sometimes he made false equivalencies, sometimes he made bulls**t strawman arguments. Bottom line, they were all varying degrees of dishonest and not good for America.

  44. I am truly concerned that politicians lie. Shocking! Who would have thought it possible. After all, everyone knows what is going on is President Trump’s head.

    No, I am concerned what politicians do.

    Obama did many, much worse things than President Trump has done.

  45. In considering whether lying is always and irredeemably a sin (or a “wrong thing,” if you aren’t into religion), I remembered a story by Mark Twain that made a big impression on me in my youth (of course, most of his stories made impressions on me; this is one of his serious rather than humorous tales).
    As I was searching for the title and a synopsis, I discovered that the theme of lying was addressed in several permutations.

    The story:
    https://study.com/academy/lesson/was-it-heaven-or-hell-theme-analysis.html
    “When is it okay to lie? In the short story,”Was it Heaven? Or Hell?” Hannah and Hester Gray are 67-year-old twins who are highly religious. They believe that the rules in the Bible are black and white and that there is no excuse for lying under any circumstances. The doctor who is treating their niece, Margaret, for typhoid ,and considers himself the perfect Christian thinks that their beliefs are ridiculous, as he thinks that compassion, is more Godly than strict adherence to truth. When Margaret’s daughter, Helen, contracts the deadly disease, Hannah and Hester rethink their ideas about whether or not the truth should be told to Margaret.”*

    The permutations: use the search terms “themes of mark twain short stories lying lies” in the browser of your choice.

    *I cannot tell a lie: I added some commas to the paragraph, because I was brought up to use them more often than is currently fashionable.

    PS Revisit Tom Lehrer’s song “The Irish Ballad” for a relevant commentary, although some of you probably remember it.
    (“Let’s not always see the same hands.”)

  46. In addition to the difference in the type of “lies” uttered by Trump and Obama noted by Neo, Trump also chooses to not use a lot of current PC euphemisms, which one could argue are a type of white lie.

    Politicians say “undocumented” immigrants and “dreamers” while Trump says “illegal aliens” – who is closer to the truth? This can be applied to so many current political issues. In that respect, Trump is more truthful simply because he refuses to hide what he’s discussing behind intentionally vague or deceitful language.

  47. Some of Trump’s lies fall into a category that the media misses or doesn’t understand: 1. How can you tell a politician is lying? Their lips are moving. That applies to Trump as well as Obama and all of them.

    2. Advertisement lies. Trump is a business man, unlike most professional politicians. Some of his lies fall into the category of advertisements for his “brand”. X dishwasher soap is better then Y dishwasher soap. Fly A airline because we are better then B airline. My policies are better then O’s policies. Maybe they are. It’s not a lie but the media sees it that way.

    3. Rah Rah lies. They are the type of lies a coach tells his team before the big game. Their record may be 0-10 and the other team’s is 10-0 but the coach tells his team that any team can beat any other team in any game. True but not usually. Usually the better team wins. The coach tells his team this to get them to go out, fight like hell and not give up. No general tells his army they are going to go out and loose. They are team lies not personal lies. I noticed that Trump does not refer to himself nearly anywhere as much as O did.

    4. Self Serving lies. These are the type when he says that his inauguration crowd was bigger then O’s. Basically they are stupid, self serving, and demeaning to him. He should stop it but I doubt if he’ll be able to.

  48. Saddam had WMD. Chemical weapons and he was funding a nuke program in Libya with Gaddafi. NOT a lie by Bush.

    And Nixon had Vietnam won.

    Obama lied about everything — the Stimulus, the jobs supposedly created, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS crimes, Obamacare (many lies in many different categories), Iran nuke deal, Trayvon, Hillary’s crimes in the State Dept. The scope and importance of these subjects is mind-boggling. No president has ever lied this often, this egregiously, and about matters so incredibly important.

  49. Pingback:Politicians, And Lies | Transterrestrial Musings

  50. Pingback:Politicians and lies – Wince and Nod

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