Truthfulness and Falsehood in Politics

Abstract

Most political scientists agree that it is not always necessary to tell the truth. Therefore, the use of political falsehoods has been an accepted practice since the birth of democracy. Caught lying, politicians are inclined to skirt the issue through "alternate" versions of the truth or claim that lies are necessary to protect national security because informing the public may be tantamount to spilling state secrets. However, in the United States, falsehoods have also been known to bring down presidencies.

Overview

From a sociological viewpoint, telling falsehoods may be the result of hysterical lying in which individuals seek to draw attention to themselves, malicious lying in which individuals lie to serve their own interests, pathological lying in which individuals lie out of a compulsion to do so or because they are unable to recognize the truth, or self-deceptive lying in which individuals convince themselves that falsehoods are true.

Philosophers, political scientists, and sociologists have been debating the issues of truthfulness and falsehoods in politics for centuries. In ancient Greece, Plato spent much of his life searching for the "eternal truth," but he also believed that the "noble lie" was a necessary ingredient of politics. German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) believed that telling the truth was a moral obligation. Another German philosopher, Karl Marx (1818-1883), the co-author of The Communist Manifesto (1848) along with Friedrich Engels, was a strong proponent of truth as he saw it. The Russian dictator, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was considered the epitome of the political liar. In the twentieth century, German American philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) became a crusader for the justifiable political lie, arguing that it was destructive to be truthful all the time. Arendt believed that the demand for truthfulness in politics was an unfortunate byproduct of the modern age. She also argued that there was a distinct difference in necessary truths in fields such as science and mathematics and the so-called truths of politics. American politics is filled with examples of politicians who agreed with Arendt in practice.

The administration of Ulysses S. Grant, who served from 1869-1877, was rife with falsehoods and corruption was widespread among his cabinet, staff, and the federal courts. Generally designated as the worst president in American president, Warren G. Harding died in 1923 as a popular president. After his death, however, news of the Teapot Dome scandal led to his presidency being totally discredited. The scandal chiefly concerned the activities of his trusted "Ohio Gang" and the maneuvering of Harding's Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall concerning federal oil reserves. Though neither Harding nor Grant are considered particularly dishonest by most historians, they shared the misfortune of having a knack for placing their trust in people who were.

In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy made false accusations to wage war on the American Left and on others who disagreed with his brand of conservatism. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson used a doubtful and ultimately false account of an attack in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify acceleration of the American presence in Vietnam. In the 1980s, both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush attempted to cover up a secret deal that supported guerilla forces in Nicaragua by selling arms to Iran. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton lied about an affair with a White House intern, becoming only the second president in American history to ever be impeached by the House of Representatives. In the 2000s, George W. Bush claimed Iraq was hiding caches of WMDs—weapons of mass destruction—to justify a military invasion to depose Saddam Hussein, who he accused of lying. In the political arena, especially at the national level, the truth can have very large consequences and the withholding, distorting or shading of it to preserve or promote national interests is something officials must wrestle with.

Some writers insist that democracies produce politicians that reflect the characteristics of their electorates. According to this view, politicians, like the people who elect them, are inclined to tell the truth or lie according to what suits their own interests. Further, successful politicians tend to develop distinct public personas that may be very different from their private personas. David Runciman (2008) described George W. Bush as offering up the persona of a "good old boy" from Texas who thinks just like his constituents when, in reality, he is the product of an elitist, affluent Eastern family.

Not surprisingly, political reporters come in for their share of accusations of lying. Bias toward one side or the other can lead to distortions, omissions, and "spin." With American politics becoming ever more divisive, journalists are called upon to remain objective when reporting on political events, yet some critics charge that in the interest of remaining neutral, journalists may be too inclined to give a subject the benefit of the doubt or "pull their punches" rather than allow a story to appear unbalanced. Critics also worry that journalistic rigor suffers when reporters fail to exercise universal skepticism, for example, by relying on accounts of events based on whether the information fits with preconceived bias.

In September 2017, for example, Donald Trump met with congressional Democrats to discuss a possible agreement. Journalistic accounts of the meeting varied, with Trump saying one thing and Democrats saying another. Critics of such reporting tactics argue that rather than seeking the truth, journalists have become partners in political lies. Journalists defend the practice of reporting what was said, as opposed to digging for the truth with analysis and verification, arguing that the more expeditious approach is a response to staff cuts, short news cycles, and a scarcity of reliable resources.

Further Insights

While politicians with absolute power are generally expected to lie or to fail to tell the truth, some optimists would like to believe that democratic politicians always tell the truth. Yet, democratic politicians often embrace lies, claiming the right to keep secrets from the public as a matter of national security. In 2014, the Washington Post (United States) and the Guardian (United Kingdom) won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on stories concerning the whistleblowing activities of Edward Snowden. In his position as a subcontractor for the National Security Agency, Snowden had gained access to classified documents that documented illegal spying on Americans following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Snowden fled the country and has not been allowed to return.

The Snowden case led to intense public and academic interest in the issues involving the right of government to conduct secret surveillance and lie about it versus the right of Americans to be free from illegal search and seizure as guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Efforts were made to stifle the Post and Guardian reporters, who admitted that they were forced to destroy relevant documents, threatened with anti-terrorism laws, and faced major external pressure to pull their reports. The European Parliament also conducted its own investigation into the matter, finding that the NSA had used information gathered through surveillance to further narrow American business interests, including providing information on contract bidding to American business owners that allowed them to outbid foreign contractors.

As early as 2001, Duncan Campbell, a journalist working with the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), reported that the ECHELON interception system was using new antiterrorism laws to intercept telephone calls, e-mails, faxes, satellite transmissions, and Internet browsing histories. Information about a secret surveillance agreement in which the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand shared information was also made public. By 2014, routine state and corporate surveillance of the Internet had been acknowledged as a major threat to citizens' rights.

Americans demand truth from advertisers and expect federal or state governments to protect them from fraud when filling prescriptions or buying cars. However, there are no truth-in-campaigning laws that require politicians to tell the truth about themselves or about their opponents. Thus, elections are often characterized by lies and half-truths designed to sway potential voters. The 2016 election was one of the most acrimonious in American history, and the election was followed by a prolonged investigation into Russian interference with the electoral process.

The Internet played a major role in the election, and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, blogs, and certain websites were rife were political polemics, much of it concocted and distributed by Russian intelligence agents. Little effort was made to fact-check information being offered through these venues, allowing false and distorted claims to flourish. In the fall of 2017, Facebook, Google, and other sites were forced to admit that they had unknowingly accepted money from Russian "trolls" tasked with sowing discord among the American electorate. In an investigation into the practice of fact-checking on the Internet, Bae Brandtzaeg Petter and Asbjørn Følstad (2017) identified Snopes and Fact Check.org as the most reliable online fact checkers, noting that both sites were considered left-biased by the political right.

Other countries around the world are also dealing with rising tensions between left and right political factions, and those tensions are often fueled by political falsehoods. José Rúas and Arantxa Capdevila (2017) suggest that the Trump election in the United States, the surprising public support for Brexit in the United Kingdom, the upswing of European populism, and the political crisis evident in Latin America are all clear indications of growing threats to the political stability that has been present since World War II in much of the developed world. Political scientists have suggested that the early twenty-first century may be remembered as the "age of impolitics."

The Trump administration's first year was dogged by challenges to the president's honesty and suggestions that cabinet and family members had on many occasions been less than forthright. Russian intelligence was assisted in its election meddling, knowingly or not, by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Chief architect of the Trump campaign and one of the president's closest advisors, Kushner publicly admitted to targeting divisive political ads to audiences of particular television shows such as The Walking Dead and NCIS to promote discord concerning such "hot-button" issues as immigration and Obamacare. Kushner extensively used social media platforms to create a database that helped the campaign target supporters and potential supporters. Similar to Ronald Reagan, who used Madison Avenue to target hot-button voter issues, Trump and the Republican National Committee identified hot-button voter issues using contemporary technologies and paid analysts. As a result, they tweaked and targeted more than 100,000 ads designed to stoke dissatisfaction among the electorate and vilify the Democratic candidate.

While neither the strategy of targeting potential voters nor the use of negative ads is illegal, and in fact are traditional and almost universally used in political campaigns, Kushner's activities appeared to many to be closely aligned with those of the Russian trolls, raising the specter of collusion between the future president and a hostile power. Selective omissions by Kushner in seeking security clearance and denials of verifiable meetings with Kremlin representatives tended to cast doubt on Kushner's statements regarding the nature of the campaign's relationship with Russia. Together with claims of convenient forgetfulness by Trump's attorney general Jeff Sessions, conflicting details of meetings, contradicted by witnesses and e-mail communications, by Donald Trump, Jr., and revelations that several Trump associates were already under investigation as foreign agents, called into question the personal honesty of the president himself.

Issues

Of all presidential scandals dealing with falsehoods, the presidency of Richard Nixon is the most notorious because falsehoods brought down the presidency. The incident started with Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) hiring former Central Intelligence Agency agents to place a wire-tapping device at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. on the evening of June 17, 1972. For the next two years, the Nixon administration engaged in a cover-up that led to a Supreme Court case (U.S. v. Nixon) concerning Nixon's refusal to release tapes of conversations held in the Oval Office.

Led by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post began a campaign to investigate the truth behind the Watergate break-in. With the help of Mark Felt, then an unnamed source known only as "Deep Throat," Woodward and Bernstein were able to document the illegal activities committed, as well as the lies told, by Nixon and members of his administration. On October 20, 1973, facing an investigation by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, Nixon fired him, and other members of his administration resigned in protest in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. When the tapes were finally released, 18 minutes of conversation had been permanently erased. Nixon ultimately resigned under threat of impeachment and probable removal from office, but he maintained that he had acted in the national interest and was protected by an executive privilege that extended to burglary, bribery, and giving false information to investigators, to say nothing of the American people.

Nixon was succeeded in office by Vice President Gerald Ford, but the 1976 election placed political outsider Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher and former Georgia governor, in the White House. Carter prided himself on telling the truth to a country that was hungry for a president it could trust after the Watergate years. Ironically, his tendency toward truthfulness often landed Carter in hot water. In a 1976 interview with Playboy, Carter admitted that although he would never commit adultery, he had looked at a woman other than his wife with lust in his heart. Given the magazine's audience, this admission made him seem almost dangerously good. In his Inaugural Address, Carter pledged to promote a "spirit of unity and trust" among Americans even while admitting that he understood that he would make mistakes.

Opponents began to portray the president as soft, naïve, and undependable in the rough and tumble international arena, and Americans began to worry about the ability of a deeply moral person to lead in the real world. Carter lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan, who projected and the optimism and confidence many Americans craved. Ironically, Carter is among the most popular of former presidents, and his reputation for honesty is integral to his work with the Atlanta-based Carter Center of Emory University. The Carter Center works with developing countries to promote peace, improve health, ensure free and fair elections, and encourage government accountability.

In October 2017, The Atlantic featured a series of articles analyzing the first few months of the Trump presidency, suggesting that Donald Trump's apparent disregard for the rule of law and long-established norms of presidential behavior was eroding trust in the office and were threatening the stability of well-established political institutions. Critiquing presidents of both parties, Goldsmith (2017) declares that Donald Trump shares some of the worst characteristics of earlier presidents, including, among other things, the self-aggrandizement of Theodore Roosevelt; the paranoia and indifference to law of Richard Nixon; and the lack of self-control and reflexive dishonesty of Bill Clinton. Goldsmith's analysis suggests that powerful politicians may be prone to a concept of truth as flexible and self-serving.

During Trump's first year, detractors noted inconsistencies in the president's statements, which appeared to be tailored to please or antagonize depending on the audience and the occasion, and which expressed ideas and opinions that seemed to shift from one day to the next. Adopting Twitter as a presidential bully pulpit, Trump issued frequent statements attacking the media for misrepresenting his character and presidency, labeling reporting he considered negative as fake. "Fake news" became a signature rallying cry for Trump and his base, providing a catchy response to journalists questioning the accuracy of Trump's often hyperbolic statements, attempts to draw connections between the president and the Kremlin, and unsavory constructions of his policies. For example, Trump's calls for unity in the wake of the Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacist demonstration sought to express disapproval of one Nazi's murder of a counterdemonstrator while withholding condemnation of white power groups, who were among his most ardent supporters, for which he was harshly criticized. Trump was also accused of skirting the truth in declaring that his travel ban was not a Muslim ban, an order that would not pass constitutional muster; in fact, as originally drafted, it was declared unconstitutional, Trump's own campaign promise to impose a Muslim ban being used as evidence. In both cases, Trump complained that media coverage was slanted—"fake news."

Terms & Concepts

Charlottesville, Virginia, Protests: In the summer of 2017, white nationalists, some of whom carried semi-automatic rifles and pistols, and a group of unarmed counterdemonstrators clashed in this college town, resulting in multiple injuries and one death.

Grounds for Impeachment: Other than identifying treason and bribery as grounds for presidential impeachment, the Constitution states only that a president may be impeached for "other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Gulf of Tonkin: Incident in which Americans and North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly exchanged fire in two separate incidents on August 2, 1964. It is probable that the Americans instigated the first attack; Lyndon Johnson used the second attack, which was never documented, to convince Congress to sign the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that prolonged the Vietnam War.

McCarthyism: Refers to the Red Scare perpetrated by Joseph McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin. In the 1950s, McCarthy insisted that America, including the federal government and especially the film industry, were rife with Communists intent on bringing down the government. In justifying the hearings, McCarthy made false statements and preposterous accusations. McCarthy's attack on the Army backfired and ultimately brought the "witch hunt" to an end.

Trump Travel Ban: Almost immediately after taking office, Donald Trump issued what he called a temporary travel ban, preventing entry into the United States from the predominately Muslim countries of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, the Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Federal courts blocked the first and second versions of the ban, but the Supreme Court allowed a third draft to continue with some limitations, agreeing to hear the case. Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela were added to the list. The Sudan and Iraq were removed from the list.

Bibliography

Garrido, M. V. (2015). Contesting a biopolitics of information and communications: The importance of truth and surveillance after Snowden. Surveillance and Society, 13(2), 153–167. Retrieved September 15, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=108472375&site=ehost-live

Goldsmith, J. (2017). Will Donald Trump destroy the presidency? The Atlantic, 320(3), 58–-66.

Jay, M. (2015). Marx and mendacity: Can there be a politics without hypocrisy? Analyse and Kritik, 37(1/2), 5–21. Retrieved September 15, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=110753345&site=ehost-live

Mearsheimer, J. J. (2011). Why leaders lie: The truth about lying in international politics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Petter, B. B., & Følstad, A. (2017). Trust and distrust in online fact-checking services. Communications of the ACM, 60(9), 65–71.

Pingree, R. J., Brossard, D., & McLeod, D.M. (2014). Effects of journalistic adjudication on factual beliefs, news evaluations, information, seeking, and epistemic political efficacy. Communication and Society, 17(5), 615-638. Retrieved September 15, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=97806212&site=ehost-live

Rúas, J., & Capdevila, A. (2017). Political communication today: Challenges and threats. Communication and Society, 36(3), 145–153.

Runciman, D. (2008). Political hypocrisy: The mask of power, from Hobbes to Orwell and beyond. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Suggested Reading

Jay, M. (2015). Marx and mendacity: Can there be a politics without hypocrisy? Analyse & Kritik, 37(1/2), 5–21. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=110753345&site=ehost-live

Koch, T., & Peter, C. (2017). Effects of equivalence framing on the perceived truth of political messages and the trustworthiness of politicians. Public Opinion Quarterly, 81(4), 847–865. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=126796116&site=ehost-live

McGranahan, C. (2017). An anthropology of lying: Trump and the political sociality of moral outrage. American Ethnologist, 44(2), 243–248. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=123188620&site=ehost-live

Racine, D. (2015). Credibility that grows with honesty and time. Policy & Practice (19426828), 73(4), 5–-34. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=116244343&site=ehost-live