Stroll into the Economics Department main offices and you will find a copy of the latest Atlantic Monthly magazine. On the cover is a big picture of George Bush and the title of the cover article: Why Presidents Lie and Why Their Worst Lies Are to Themselves, by Carl Cannon. In it Cannon offers a typology of lies told by presidents: lies to package oneself to the electorate (William H. Harrison’s log cabin) lies for the sake of national security (FDR and Lend Lease), lies to protect one’s image (Clinton and “that woman”), lies a president can justify telling because he chooses not to know the truth (CIA operations protected by ‘plausible deniability’), lies due to general dimwitedness (Reagan and Iran-Contra). He saddles Bush with the most destructive type of lying, lying to onesself (Iraq, multiple occasions).
Entertaining, but Cannon misses the forest for the trees. Bush’s lies are not personal character flaws, they are part of an institutional structure devoted to PR over policy. You want tax cuts? Let’s say “every family benefits,” let’s say “the average family gets $1400.” These lies – the truth is that every family who pays income taxes, roughly half of American families, benefits, and the median as opposed to average family gets a couple hundred bucks, tops – help sell the product. You want a war with Iraq? Let’s say “there is no doubt that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction” whereas the truth is, as much as members of the administration may believe Saddam has WMD, they are well aware that there is doubt expressed in any number of intelligence agency reports. Bush’s character flaw isn’t that he believes his own lies, it is that he is a willing participant in a sophisticated PR system that depends on lies to sell its product because if the public knew the truth they’d never buy it.
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