How do know if a politician is lying? Watch his mouth and see if it’s moving. Politicians do not have a monopoly on lying, but they have raised the bar to a high art form.
By now, all of you faithful readers, will have been deluged with comment from pundits far smarter than this writer on the newest lies told by yet another aspiring politician. Richard Blumenthal, now running for the Senate seat to be vacated by Chris Dodd in Connecticut got caught red handed (or red lipped as the case may be) by the NY Times fibbing about having served in Viet Nam when, in reality, he only ran the Toys for Tots program for the Marine Reserve in NY. He later admitted to “misspeaking” about the matter, but he was coughing into his sleeve at the time and it didn’t come out to clearly. According to my on-line dictionary, to misspeak means to speak inaccurately, inappropriately, or too hastily. Yep. He certainly did that. But before we come down to hard on our newest tricky Dick, we need to place his particular political lie in the larger pantheon of political lies that have gone before.
My favorite all time lie by a politician is one told by one of my favorites for whom I admittedly voted….twice. You will probably remember. “I. Did. Not. Have. Sex. With. That. Woman.” Ok. I admit to a certain prurient interest in the episode which gave rise to this whopper. Unlike most of his predecessors, he at least got impeached for lying, but narrowly avoided conviction.
I’m not gonna even put Cheney’s lies on the table here. There’s too many of them, and I get so angry even writing about them that I’d get distracted.
Another lie, in the category of someone lying that clearly did not need to lie is one from Pete Dawkins. You may not know Pete, but he was a hero to me. He was a winner at everything he did. He turned down a full scholarship to Yale to attend West Point where he was not only President of his class, but Captain of the football team and winner of the Heisman Trophy, and recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship. He got an advanced degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford and a Phd from Princeton. If he hadn’t retired from the Army as a Brigadier General, according to some, he would have been a lock for ultimately becoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He actually served in Viet Nam and got two Bronze Stars for Valor, and yet, and yet he, too, lied. While running for the Senate, he told a group of West Point graduates that he had served not one but two tours in Viet Nam (maybe he forgot) and was wounded (he was not). Why…..maybe it’s something to do with the senate.
My last example is not from a politician, but about one. Political fever was running high in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson was running against John Adams for President. Jefferson was under great fire for his views on the separation of church and state and personal attacks were the order of the day. Timothy Dwight, then the President of Yale (but think of him more like Jerry Falwell of today) said as fact about the consequences of a possible election of TJ.
“The bible would be cast into a bonfire, our worship changed to a dance of Jacobin (French) frenzy, our wives and daughters dishonored, and our sons converted into the disciples of Voltaire and the dragoons of Marat”
Whoa there…..dragoons of Marat? Not exactly fact based. Misspoken perhaps. Today we call it political hyperbole, but it’s still just a lie.
I think there’s a simpler explanation about all this unnecessary political lying. My darling wife S., who offers a lot of insight into this kind of thing, says that men have a defective gene which makes them lie. They can’t help it. When she first posited this to me I was not only dubious, but personally nervous, in the extreme. To condemn the whole of male mankind as incontrovertible liars seemed, well, a bridge to far, and so I resisted her logic. But, as you might have guessed, her supposition is, indeed, rooted in at least quasi-science. A poll conducted by the London Telegraph and printed in their issue of 13 September 2009 was headlined, “Men Lie Twice as Much as Women”. In fact, intoned the article, the average man lies forty two times per week while the average woman would fib a mere twenty times a week. I’ll refer to this as the “Male Whopper Gap” or MWG. If extended over a man’s average life span, the MWG suggests an extra 63,336 lies. This is a heavy load for any man.
But not all lies are equal. As political pundit Paul Begala said, “if you tell your mother-in-law that you love her rhubarb pie, it might be a lie, but the harm is zero and the intent is nobel.” Ipso facto…..a good lie. This is right up there with telling your wife that you really like her new hairdo. Saves a lot of grief and creates some momentary good will.
Then there is the creeping lie. This one is more difficult to categorize because it might start out being a lie of little consequence, but turn in to a bold faced whopper when retold and enhanced over time. Let me show you how it works. A guy is with a group of buds quaffing a few at the tavern watching their team lose another game on tv, and he throws in to the conversation, “I was the starting shortstop for my high school team.” FACT: He played a few games when the starter had a sprained ankle. Then he adds, “I led the team in doubles and was second in RBI’s.” FACT: He batted .236 and never got past second base. But he can’s stop himself there and says, “I was voted 2nd team all state (some modesty enhances the lie) and was recruited hard by a few colleges and the Chicago White Sox.” FACT: He got a team certificate indicating appreciation for his hard work at team practices.
There’s one last category of lie that has to be dealt with for complete coverage of the subject. I don’t have a good name for it but it’s the lie that is repeated so often and so loudly that the teller convinces himself that it’s the truth. This technique is most often the purview of notable or notorious people. Generally, the rule is that the further the truth is from the lie, the more often it must be repeated, and, if the lie is truly incredible, it must be repeated very, very loudly as well. Think Hitler here to cite but one notorious example. At the other end of the spectrum, one of my old bosses, was a fine practitioner of this art form. I remember vividly his retelling of incidents and meetings in which I had participated, and after his nth retelling, not only did he believe his enhanced version, which had substantially morphed over time and retelling, even I would begin to believe that night was day and up was down. Go figure.
Thinking again of the Telegraph poll on gender differences in lying, I’m offering here an improved version of the five Most Frequently Told Lies by men and then by women. They are provided for your information only with no editorial comment.
Most Frequent Lies as Told by Men
1. I’m fine. Don’t worry.
2. I only had one quick drink.
3. That dress shows off your figure really well
4. I just left the office and I’m on my way home. Be there in a few minute.
5. I was not looking at that woman.
Most Frequent Lies as Told by Women
1. Don’t worry. I’m just fine.
2. I’ve had this purse for ages.
3. It cost almost nothing, it was on sale
4. I’ll be ready in a minute
5. I don’t care one bit if you don’t make as much as my sister’s husband
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
