I don’t believe people should lie. It’s what my momma taught me.
I am fascinated by a line of thought I’m seeing in the media that we WANT our President to lie. I mean, what??? Didn’t President Clinton get in a speck of trouble over that? Didn’t President Nixon actually get booted after he lied to the American people?
Perhaps the world’s most famous liar, Pinocchio.
And yet.
The Worst Lies Ever
An article in Monday’s New York Times by Kevin Kruse, a professor of history from Princeton, espoused the belief that the lies in this Presidential campaign were the worst ever … here is his conclusion:
To be sure, the Obama campaign has certainly had its own share of dissembling and distortion, including about Mr. Romney’s positions on abortion and foreign aid. But nothing in it — or in past campaigns, for that matter — has equaled the efforts of the Romney campaign in this realm. Its fundamental disdain for facts is something wholly new.
I don’t want to get into a political tit for tat on who lied the most in the campaign. It’s over, it’s done, and who wants to go back? However, it’s certainly true that both President Obama and Governor Romney stated things directly — and approved ads to run — that stretched the truth beyond the breaking point. Websites are devoted to tracking statements and evaluating their truthfulness.
“Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” is the category used by the fact checkers for what they consider the most egregious lies in the campaign.
We need professionals for that, apparently.
Now, we have factcheck.org and Politifact.com, who tell us what they think is true and false. Many other websites do this, but some have obvious, slanted agendas, like MoveOn.org and Newsmax.com. Soon, you have spin doctors telling their version of a truth that is based on the implication of the other candidate’s statement after it is taken out of context, rotated and mutilated.
Walter Cronkite was called “The Most Trusted Man in America” as he anchored the CBS Evening News, 1962 – 1981. He ended his broadcasts with “And that’s the way it is….”
Journalism, I mourn for thee. We used to trust Walter Cronkite to tell us what was right, and he didn’t let us down. Those days are gone, unfortunately.
Today, we have Presidential debates where both candidates confront each other, saying things like, “That is simply not true!” In the tightly formatted debates, however, there is no one moderating to require either candidate to respond directly to such basic allegations. Truth has become a matter of perspective, not a matter of being correct. And since we now know both sides lie … who cares? Everyone is doing it.
The Governor did it. The President did it.
An article in Tuesday’s Reason.com postulates that we expect our politicians to lie, in that we expect them to do any reasonable thing to win so that they can represent our shared interests.
Here’s how Johnny Schad, my co-worker and the Democratic Committee Chair for Iowa’s Palo Alto County explained it:
“We the people have to be willing to take some responsibility for our government. Politicians (Republican or Democrat) don’t lie because they want to; they lie because we demand that they do.
For example, Gov. Romney had a 59 point economic plan that few people would even consider until he cut it down to a simple 5 point plan. That means over-simplifying to such a ridiculous level that the result cannot be entirely true.”
The Awful Truth
Thomas Jefferson said “The government you elect is government you deserve.”
This scares me to death.
I certainly hope that we do not deserve a government that lies. I absolutely expect our President to tell us the truth. Don’t you?
And, finally, I certainly hope that our elected officials learn that telling the truth is better than the alternative … because we need to teach them exactly that!
