Whether you went to Holy Trinity Grammar School, P.S. 159 or Yeshiva Elementary, you learned in first grade that when you don’t tell the truth, it is called a lie. And telling a lie is wrong.
We learned that at school. We learned that at home. We learned that through our faith. And if somehow we needed even more reinforcement, watching Pinocchio’s nose grow and grow did the trick. Lying is wrong. Simple enough.
Why is it that smart, powerful people, including presidents and people who work for presidents, who have all spent more days in church or synagogue and many more years learning about right and wrong and what constitutes lying, don’t seem to have a good handle on this simple concept?
Not many years ago, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (while he was cheating on his wife with a staff underling) led us through the national nightmare of impeachment over presidential lying about the president’s sexual activities with a staff underling. Some continue to insist the impeachable offense was perjury in front of the grand jury while others characterize the offense as simply a dispute over the meaning of the word “is.” Whatever. Bill Clinton lied for a very long time to many people about what was going on with Monica Lewinsky. Lying is wrong. Clinton was wrong to lie.
We now know that George W. Bush lied to the American people and to the Congress many times about Iraq: the reasons for going in, the evidence of a threat, the progress on the ground. So it is no surprise that last week, when his attorney general. Alberto Gonzales, was discovered to have lied before Congress about the reasons for firing a handful of federal prosecutors, the president’s lips could not form the words, “He lied.” Gonzales “mishandled the explanation,” the president said. He wasn’t careful enough about how he “characterized the facts.” He may not have delivered “a straightforward communication” to Congress.
Why didn’t the president just say Gonzales should not have lied about why the U.S. attorneys were fired?
Why didn’t the attorney general simply tell Congress the truth, that of course politics played a role in the firing of the prosecutors? Because the other thing we learned in school and at home is that sometimes when you slip and lie and nobody makes you pay a penalty for doing so, it is easy to slip again. And again. Before long, especially when you become an adult politician, lying comes naturally and you actually fool yourself into thinking what you are doing is just “characterizing the facts” conveniently, or handling the explanation to your advantage or communicating in a way that may not be exactly straightforward.
We know it’s possible for politicians to tell the truth even when it is very difficult. When embarrassing reports surfaced last fall about that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s personal life, he stood up and said, “I want to make it clear that everything you’ve heard and read is true, and I’m deeply sorry about that.”
It is possible that the American people may be at the tipping point when it comes to being lied to. Which is why while the key issue in 2008 race may about Iraq, it will not be about one’s vote for the initial resolution, one’s support for the surge or a timetable for withdrawal. It may be about the truth: who can tell the truth about what they were thinking and what they did and why they are where they are right now on Iraq and on a hundred other matters; who know the differences between lying and telling the truth; and who knows for sure that, however inconvenient or politically difficult, the truth matters.
It may be about who went to first grade, saw Pinocchio and didn’t lose those lessons learned on the way to the White House.
Sue Casey, a former Denver council member, teaches at the University of Colorado at Denver.
