Over the course of our national history, we have invested many expectations in our Presidents. We expect them to lead, to set an example, to provide strength and wise counsel in times of crisis. More than anything, though, we (somewhat hypocritically) hold them to a higher moral standard than we could ever justify holding ourselves to. There are any number of reasons for this, I suppose, but primarily as the leader of the Free World, we expect our President to be a person of high moral fiber and impeccable honesty.
Of course, that these expectations are patently absurd and unrealistic (anyone ever study Machiavelli?) given the nature of national and international politics are conveniently glossed over. Heaven help the (Democratic) President who prevaricates.
Presidential dishonesty, like so many things in life, is not what it used to be. Before the 1960s, few could even imagine that a President would deliberately mislead them on matters so fundamental as war and peace….
Alas, how things have changed. Now something of a double-standard applies to Presidents, particularly those of the Republican persuasion. Officially, the expectation of honesty and integrity is still in place. In reality, though, Republican Presidents have been given a virtual free pass by the media when it comes to prevarication in the service of policy.
The events of Iran/contra barely rated a mention in the media during the weeklong celebration of Reagan’s life following his June 2004 death. Former President Jimmy Carter, who earned a reputation for being painfully honest in public life, meanwhile, is considered a kind of political misfit within these same media circles, in which many seem more comfortable with a politician who ignores painful truths than one who confronts them.
From the standpoint of personal political consequences, the act of purposeful deception by an American President depends almost entirely on the context in which it occurs. Bill Clinton was impeached for his decision to “lie” under oath about adultery—a choice that, fortunately for many of his predecessors in office, no previous President had ever faced.
Of course, Republican Presidents of recent vintage have raised public prevarication to a virtual art form. Reagan had Iran/Contra, which was so brazen as to be almost unrecognizable as a lie. George W. Bush, while campaigning on the promise to “restore integrity” to the White House, has spent the past four years mastering the art of the lazy lie. Simply put, this is the art of lying poorly, being caught at it, and yet somehow avoiding being held to account for it. This seems to be an option available only to Republican Presidents.
To the relief of many made uncomfortable by the complicated moral questions raised by a President who lied about what most people consider to be a private moral sphere, Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, returned the presidency to the tradition of deception relating to key matters of state, particularly those of war and peace. Bush may have claimed as a candidate that he would “tell the American people the truth,” but as President he effectively declared his right to mislead whenever it suited his purpose. We have no need here to rehearse the many costly untruths that led to the disastrous invasion of Iraq, as well as almost every significant policy initiative of the Bush Administration, nor their costs. As Michael Kinsley sagely observed early in the Administration’s tenure, “Bush II administration lies are often so laughably obvious that you wonder why they bother. Until you realize: They haven’t bothered. If telling the truth was less bother, they’d try that, too. The characteristic Bush II form of dishonesty is to construct an alternative reality on some topic and to regard anyone who objects to it as a sniveling dweeb obsessed with ‘nuance.’”….
With few exceptions, Presidents lie largely not for the reasons above but for reasons of political convenience. The decisions to lie were bred of a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the practice of American democracy. American Presidents have no choice but to practice the diplomacy of Great Power politics, but American citizens have rarely if ever been asked to understand the world in those terms. As the dissident Kennedy-Johnson aide George Ball observed in 1967, “We have used the vocabulary and syntax of Wilsonian Universalism while actively practicing the politics of alliances and spheres of influence and it is now time that we stopped confusing ourselves with our political hyperbole.” The result, more often than not, is that when deals must be struck and compromises made on behalf of large purposes, Presidents tend to prefer deception over education.
If a President can lie his way into a war based on faulty and willfully misinterpreted intelligence, we have truly entered the age of political situational ethics. It would be nice to believe that Americans would not countenance a liar in the White House, but the reality is that fully 50% of the electorate seem unwilling to hold George W. Bush accountable for the reality that his lies and deceptions are directly responsible for the deaths of 1100+ American soldiers.
Yes, he may be “resolute”, but he is still a Liar- AND WE DESERVE BETTER.
