Lies Don't Matter

Dick Cheney famously once told a reporter “Deficits don’t matter.”  He was speaking at the time about what mattered and what did not matter in an election campaign.

He might as well have said, “Reality doesn’t matter,” or “Facts don’t matter” or even better, “Lies don’t matter.”

In all cases, he would have been right.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a big Cheney fan, but the dude did know what he was lying (whoops….I mean “talking”) about.

Some people get all upset about the lies politicians tell.  When the big fat ones start to pile up, it can be a little disconcerting.  The Prairie Weather blog , for example, is disturbed about Mitt Romney lying all the time about Obama’s foreign policy. Romney’s staff admits that the candidate only does this because his audience finds it “satisfying” , especially when Romney falsely imputes anti-exceptionalism[i] and anti-American attitudes to the President.  .

Prairie Weather goes on to fret about the long history lies in the past by earlier candidates:

 [L]ying doesn't begin or end with Romney.  The lie-culture has gone beyond the pale -- and been beyond the pale for thirty whole years.  Reagan's staff did it in spades.  Gingrich turned the House into a cheap imitation of itself in the mid '90's.  Bush and Cheney lied us into war and then lied untold thousands of people to death….

Getting all peeved about politicians lying, however, misses the mark.  Politicians on the campaign trail are lying all of the time. That is what political campaigns are these days: carefully structured fictional stories designed to appeal to the way the candidate’s audiences think the world works.  The stories are all either outright lies, exaggerations, misleading statements or rhetorical jibes.

This is a proven vote-getting system. There is no getting around it.

This should be no surprise to anyone anymore.

Given that nothing anyone says in any political campaign has anything remotely to do with the truth or anything that could be termed “factual”, an important thing to consider--in fact, the most important thing to consider--may be this:  does the candidate believe what he is saying?

In some cases, like the Romney statements about Obama’s anti-American attitudes, the candidate or his staff openly admit that they don’t really believe the statements. This presents real problems for the candidate, and Romney is paying a heavy price for his cynicism and obvious lack of sincerity.  He is becoming viewed in his own party as the candidate who will say anything to get a vote. Who the Hell knows what Willard Romney really believes?

On the other hand, take Rick Santorum. He may be telling even much bigger, fatter lies than Romney, but with a difference. He really believes what he is saying. In fact, when Santorum comes up against something he doesn’t believe in, such as the separation of church and state, it physically affects him so much that it actually makes him want to throw up. This is working for him.

 

Why is this working? It is because whether the story the politician tells is true or not does not matter at all to most people. Only the politician’s perceived integrity matters. If he believes his own story, its OK.  But if he is only acting sincere, and doesn’t really mean it, that can be a problem.

As usual, there is a book that explains this phenomenon in detail: “Don’t Think of An Elephant,” by George Lakoff.  In the book, Lakoff says of a politician’s untruthful statement:

Most people will grant that even if the statement happened to be false, if he believed it, and was not trying to deceive, and was not trying to gain advantage or harm anyone, then there was no lie…[L]ying in itself is not and should not be the issue. The real issue is betrayal of trust.[ii]

And that is why Santorum is tearing Willard Romney a new cloaca.

I strongly recommend Lakoff’s book. There is a lot more to it than I can cover in this blog.

---

[i] American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the US is qualitatively different from other countries and superior to all others. In accusing Obama of not believing in American exceptionalism, Romney usually refers to Obama’s speech in Berlin in 2008 when the President said “I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.”  Of course, Romney always drops out Obama’s next sentence: “But I also know how much I love America.”

[ii] George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant.