The Lying Liars

Bette Davies, one of the greatest Hollywood actresses to grace the silver screen, once famously said, “Show me a politician who’s a liar and I’ll show you a politician.” In other words, all accomplished politicians are also accomplished liars. Actually, Bette Davies said no such thing but as telling lies seems to be in vogue, this was my alternative fact.

Back in 2003, comedian and soon to be politician, Al Franken, now the US Senator for Minnesota, published a book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.” Franken challenged media conservative opinion of the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter in a liberal backlash to right wing opinion. Franken was sued by Fox News because his book headlined the phrase, “fair and balanced reporting,” which Fox was using to advertise its News program. I am delighted to say that the courts threw out the law suit, as the litmus test for newspaper reporting since the year dot has been “fair and balanced.” Ironic,” as Mr Trump might say! But I digress.

Lying is part and parcel of a politician’s armoury, although the art was arguably best expressed by the UK’s most senior civil servant, former Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, who spoke of “being economical with the truth.” At present, President Trump is being pilloried for his constant untruthful allegations, often made via Twitter. The most recent (at time of publication) is the assertion that President Obama had Trump’s New York HQ wiretapped. A reader of my blog has asked whether there is a coincidence that Trump’s most shocking tweets are made on the Sabbath, when Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is not available to lend a calming hand. It is a fair point.

In the interests of fair and balanced blogging, there is a crop of American Presidents who, over the past decades, have lied to the public. Let’s start with the Democrats. Arguably, the most famous lie of all was told by Bill Clinton when he looked fair and square into the lens of a television camera and told viewers, “I did not have intercourse with that woman, Miss Lewinski.” Technically, he told the truth, but only if you accept that oral sex does not count as intercourse.

The most highly regarded 20^th century President, Franklin Roosevelt, lied about keeping America out of World War II. After the outbreak of war in 1939, FDR advocated publicly the policy of keeping the United States at peace. He did this when also engaging in a secret correspondence with Winston Churchill about the US entering the War. The President's pledges of keeping the US out of the conflict reached a crescendo during the last days of the 1940 election campaign. For example, at Boston in October, he said: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." Yet secret American-British talks were held in Washington in 1940/1 when extraordinary care was taken to conceal from Congress not only the contents of the talks but the fact that they were taking place at all. FDR was preparing for America to go to the aid of its GB ally at the same time when FDR was telling the voters they would not find America as a participant. Mind you, in this he could point to a precedent, that of his Democratic predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, who in 1916 did the self-same thing in relation to World War I.

There are two other Democratic US Presidents who were patently untruthful. In the 1960 Presidential campaign, John Kennedy accused the Eisenhower administration of allowing a “missile gap” to have developed and that the Soviets were a long way ahead of US in both quality and quantity of ICBMs and nuclear warheads. This was a barefaced lie, intended to embarrass his opponent, VP Richard Nixon, and to lay grounds for a massive military expenditure if JFK won.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson seized on an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin when, he told the American public, the US gunboat Pueblo had been fired upon by the North Vietnamese. There had indeed been a gunfight but the Americans had fired first. Using the lie, LBJ persuaded Congress to pass a resolution, giving him authority without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia and “to do whatever necessary in order to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defence Treaty .” The Resolution came to be called ‘the open check.’ It gave LBJ immense power to involve American armed forces in Vietnam without recourse to Congress.

The Republican Presidents post 1968 are no slouches in the lying department. Ronald Reagan was caught red-handed in the Iran-Contra affair, breaking two Acts of Congress. The 1987 Senate investigation chaired by Senator John Tower, a Reagan fan, reached a neutral conclusion but did not clear the President. Reagan’s apology was a masterpiece of obfuscation: “A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that’s true………..but the facts and evidence tell me it is not. There are reasons why it happened but no excuses. It was a mistake.”

President George W. Bush regarded himself as “a war President” and said so publicly. He also castigated Iran, Iraq and North Korea as “the axis of evil” in the 2002 State of the Union address. He lied to the American people about Iraq’s ownership of weapons of mass destruction, but so did his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “W” had a precedent set by his own father who, in the 1988 election campaign, told the press and, by extension, the voters: “Read my lips, no new taxes.”

Sooner than two years after becoming the 41^st President, Bush raised taxes.

Arguably, though, the foremost Presidential liar was Richard Nixon. His political education began in the dirt of California politics. In his run for Congress in 1946, he demonized the Democratic candidate, Helen Geoghan. His lying techniques were keenly honed by June, 1972, five months before his re-election, when the Watergate break-in took place. There has never been proof that Nixon knew of the break-in before the fact but the White House tapes disclosed the President’s involvement in the cover up, a mere four days after the event. From then, Nixon told lie after lie. Worst of all, in a 1973 televised press conference, he claimed: “The people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” Sadly, he was telling one of the many Watergate lies.

Back to present times. I have no doubt that Trump lied knowingly when he tweeted he had been wiretapped by President Obama. Why did he lie? My money is his desire to keep control of the news cycle. The Obama wiretap story took the heat off Jess Sessions in the weekend media. Then the Obama story reverted to the inside pages with Trump’s new Executive Order on immigration and the Obamacare shinanigans. While Trump is a liar, he is not only in distinguished company, he also seems to be the master of manipulating the news industry!