Yes, Virginia, Politicians Lie
It seems that Robert Kagan would like us to believe that it’s some kind of “conspiracy theory” to think that the Bush administration told some fibs when trying to sell the country on the merits of invading Iraq. Kagan proposes and Matt Duss disposes. I would add to what Duss says that if you think back to 2002 and early 2003 it was commonplace for supporters of the war to observe that Bush wasn’t making the “right case” or the “real case” for the war. It was always, in other words, understood among readers of Washington Post editorials and Tom Friedman op-eds and The Threatening Storm, The New Republic, and The Weekly Standard that the official sales pitch was just that — a sales pitch aimed at the rubes — and not the real argument.
Meanwhile, I just think it’s very strange that the accusation that the administration lied about this continues to be treated as a nuclear allegation, one step from tinfoil hat territory. Think about the present presidential campaign. If I were to say “both candidates have made misleading claims about their opponents and about their own plans” I think that would be considered the most staid conventional wisdom imaginable. And the same was true for 2004 and the same for 2000. Because, you know, practical politics is not a field that’s known for its scrupulous honesty.
32 Responses to “Yes, Virginia, Politicians Lie”
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October 29th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Those wacky conspiracy theorists with their “facts” and “tape recorders” and “DVR’s” and “documents”.
If their crazy charges of lying about the war were true, how could over 10,000 members of the Kagan family have gained jobs advising and propagandizing for the war? Does that seem likely given the awesome known trustworthiness of Bush Jr. hiring?
October 29th, 2008 at 11:26 am
In an exchange where someone says, I think Bush misled the American people about Iraq, and the interlocutor exclaims, “Are you accusing Bush of ‘lying’?”, it’s pretty convincing to respond: “Yes, are you saying that politicians never lie?”
In other words, the “are you accusing Bush of lying” gambit only works if it’s not responded to.
October 29th, 2008 at 11:32 am
sure, all politicians lie.
but neo-cons take it to a new level.
and the kagan clan is the worst of the neo-cons.
when can we bust out the rico statute and sieze their vacation cottages?
October 29th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Hey,MY — have you read / commented on Suskin’s “The Way of the World”?
October 29th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
It’s a pretty clear case of doublethink, where “lying” is not inconsistent with “honesty”. And no, there’s no “…on the other hand…”.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Maybe Kagan would like to listen to the barrage of John McCain and RNC robocalls being pumping into the Philly suburbs and tell me about Republican respect for the truth.
Those robocalls calls — with their underlying tone of rage and hatred and their shameless deceit — really show the soul of the Republican party.
The horror. The horror.
Exterminate the brutes.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Sure, FDR finagled us into WW2, but there’s no hint that FDR or FDR’s friends were war profiteers or that FDR had anything but honorable (and pragmatic) intentions in the war with Germany and Japan. Germany and Japan were extraordinarily wicked and menacing regimes. Meanwhile, back in the present, Bush’s pals have profited immensely due the war with Iraq, and as wicked as Saddam was, once the lie about WMDs evaporates as a rationale, the entire war becomes a pointless exercise. We’re at war in Iraq because we’re at war in Iraq. It’s a horror show of empty gestures made over extreme misery and death. Which the Republicans have never shrunk from attempting to profit on. That’s the moral horror. The vulture’s instincts and intent of the GOP.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I find it strange that Matt persists in apparently not understanding that there are different kinds of lies some of which are much more serious than others.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Matt should no better than this. Words like “lie” are used in the context of the profession. It means dishonesty beyond the accepted standards of the profession.
Yes, even supporters of the war knew that the explicitly stated reasons for the war were bullshit. The assumption was that the “real” reasons weren’t a lie. The implicit message was “trust us, we know what we’re doing”. To say the president lied is to say he deceived us beyond the standard deception. I think he did, Kagan thinks he didn’t and it has nothing to do with whether Bush believed Iraq really had WMD.
All CEOs are upbeat about their company, even in the worst times. If “dishonest CEO” is to be anything other than a tautology, it has to separate Ken Lay from “regular” CEOs. Heck, even the Mafia has its standards for “honor”. I’m assuming political partisan columnists have their own set of distinctions as well.
So if you say Bush lied, either you’re making an utterly banal and pointless observation OR you’re making a really serious charge.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I’m surprised to hear MY put it this way. Claiming that Obama wants to raise your taxes in order to get elected is not the same thing as claiming that “we know” there are WMDs when we know no such thing. Making a vigorous case, minimizing counter-arguments, giving the available evidence the best spin possible, is all standard rhetorical fair play. But Bush claimed to have soild evidence of a grave threat when he actually didn’t. There’s also some evidence that he was deliberately lying about the evidence. That’s the “conspiracy theory” part, though–the idea that Bush knew Saddam had no WMDs, but fabricated a case for war on that basis anyway.
The neo-cons talked about the “right case” and the “best case” and whether the sales pitch amounted to lying. Wolfowitz explained that there were multiple valid justifications for war, each of which could stand on its own, it’s just that the strongest justifications were not the most politically effective justifications. So no, I don’t agree that in 2003 all the pro-war people acknowledged that lies were being told in the case for war.
Bush told clear falsehoods in making the case for war. That much is true beyond doubt. What should further be investigated is how well he understood that he was telling clear falsehoods to the public. It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a very legitimate issue that should have been vigorously addressed as soon as it was discovered that there really were no WMDs, and Bush should have faced articles of impeachment if it could be proved that he knew he was lying. But now Matthew Yglesias tells us that that’s all kind of silly because politicians lie all the time.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Re DJ’s comment “Words like “lie” are used in the context of the profession. It means dishonesty beyond the accepted standards of the profession.”
————-
4500+ fathers, husbands and sons have died in an unnecessary war to seize non-existent nukes and all too real oil deposits.
Thousands more are horribly crippled for life.
Where is there any kind of moral standard for that?
Millions of Americans go without medical care and large numbers are homeless — while our President spent $1 Trillion plus on Iraq. Where’s the moral standard in that?
If some grieving parent who lost a child in Iraq held Robert Kagan down and dug Kagan’s eyeballs out with a pocketknife, I would not convict that parent if I was on the jury. How’s that for a moral standard?
October 29th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Meanwhile, I just think it’s very strange that the accusation that the administration lied about this continues to be treated as a nuclear allegation, one step from tinfoil hat territory.
It isn’t, but a big majority of the public. Kagan looks like an idiot for saying this.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Matt, do you really not get that lying in order to intentionally start a war in which many thousands of people are killed is just a little bit of a bigger deal than lying about (say) the details of your opponent’s spending proposals?
October 29th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Here’s my candidate for one of Bush’s bigger and more consequential lies:
He said he was doing everything possible to try to avoid a war.
I suggest that he was actually doing virtually everything he could to ensure that a war happened.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
If it’s not officially the Verdict of History that the Bush administration intentionally lied to Congress (successfully) and the U.N. (unsuccessfully) in a vain attempt to justify a war of aggression, then it ought to be. It’s just ridiculous to argue the case this was an innocent mistake!
October 29th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
“the official sales pitch was just that — a sales pitch aimed at the rubes — and not the real argument.”
No shit. It’s also known – or should be known to the well read – that Robert Kagan is just a tarted up PR flack. Anything he says up until he publishes his eventual mea culpa should be parsed as marketing, not honest policy debate.
October 29th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
It was always… understood… that the official sales pitch was just that — a sales pitch aimed at the rubes…
It went meta as soon as it started, when Andy Card was asked in early Sept. 2002 why administration spokesmen were suddenly peddling smoking guns and mushroom clouds:
“From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
Most of the press took that as a wink, a nudge, a “we’re all spinmeisters together” wisecrack, instead of the cool, candid glimpse of reality it was — to their lasting shame.
October 29th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Most politicians lie, and when the national security is concerned, it is almost a patriotic duty.
The public, to a degree, understands, with some hope that the leaders nevertheless “know something”, and that they are prudent.
A relatively novel combinations was “they did not know a shit” and they were damn reckless.
The good news is that a superpower can afford to be reckless. But if we proceed with training Georgia with our neo-con attidue to war and truth, the results are not pretty.
The bad news is that even if we can afford a terrible waste, it is still pretty terrible,
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