Romney | MowryJournal.com

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!

Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, got her group into a lot of trouble in 2003 when she loudly, publicly and internationally declared that she was ashamed that President George W Bush was from Texas.

She was not happy with the policies of President Bush, so she proclaimed her dissatisfaction from the bully pulpit of her London concert stage. The result: she insulted a great percentage of Americans, including a whole bunch of the Country radio community. Those Country radio listeners expressed their unhappiness quickly and loudly … and within hours, you did not hear very much Dixie Chicks music on Country radio stations.

There was a public debate on Ms. Maines’ right to free speech, which she lustily engaged in for many months. Free speech was never in question; I support her right to express her opinion 100%. I also support the right of the listeners of Country radio to say that they don’t want to listen to her music. Free speech won, but the way we view our President was tarnished.

In 2006, Maines also retracted her earlier apology to President Bush, stating, “I apologized for disrespecting the office of the President, but I don’t feel that way anymore. I don’t feel he is owed any respect whatsoever.” This appears to be Maines’ final position: that President George W Bush was not owed any respect whatsoever.

Other entertainers jumped on the bandwagon, by the way … Julia Roberts and Carlos Santana are both quoted as saying that “W” was “not my President.” That began a whole slew of back & forth partisanship about who was, or wasn’t, or wouldn’t be, “my president.” That inflammatory rhetoric continues to this day (buy a t-shirt! buy a bumper sticker!). And as celebrities and politicians feed the media escalating and bombastic rhetoric, we are left with an emotionally exhausted society that believes the end of the world will come if their candidate does not win.

When you wholly invest yourself into the political process, you run the risk of losing track of your values when your candidate does — or does not — prevail. If your candidate wins, you may feel you can dictate “how it’s going to be” to everyone else. If your candidate loses, you may feel disenfranchised from your government. You may feel you have no hope. Such is not the case: the strength of our country is based on the balance between the three branches of government, and we believe that balance will save our republic, come what may. And we have been proven right through civil war, world war, assassination, economic turmoil and social upheaval.

Let me tell you about my President.

In his farewell address to the American people given in January 1953, President Truman gave his philosophy on being in charge of our government, “The President–whoever he is–has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.” This sign was on his desk throughout his Presidential term, and is now in his Presidential Library in Independence, MO.

He is, first and foremost, the defender of the Constitution. He swears to protect the Constitution when he takes the oath of office. He will do whatever it takes for the United States of America to survive. To thrive.

He is the Commander-in-Chief, and directs our armed forces. Hopefully, he will use them sparingly. But he will use them to protect American interests here and abroad.

He is the head of one entire branch of our government: the executive branch. He is the face of America to the world.

These days, it seems that he must be a referee, as he attempts to balance the odious extremities of both parties and work with the Congress to craft the laws that govern our nation. Today’s rhetoric is not the most spiteful in our country’s history (Lincoln was denounced as a “military dictator … grasping at the power of a despot,” for example. ), but today’s political statements are certainly the most insulting and divisive in the memory of most Americans.

I regret that today’s citizens believe they must speak in an extreme fashion in order to be heard.

I regret that today’s presidential candidates feel they must spin their opponent’s statements and implications into a twisted version of “truth” that has little to do with the original statement’s intent. And many journalists are eager to feed the monster and escalate the statements even more with screaming headlines proclaiming the other guy a liar, an idiot … well, you’ve seen the headlines. They look the same to me, whether you’re reading the Huffington Post or the New York Times, Newsmax or the Drudge Report.

I know that I’ll disagree with our next President on many issues. That’s not really news: I disagree with everyone, including myself, sometimes. Disagreement is not the same thing as discourtesy. Or defamation. Or destruction.

I don’t know who’s going to win the election on Tuesday. But, I can tell you this: he will be my president.