Abstract

A more provocative subject than “lying in politics” is difficult to imagine. Everybody, from the proverbial “Joe Sixpack” to ivory-tower philosophers, can wax eloquently on the subject, if only because easy-to-find, shocking examples abound. If moral outrage were judged an essential vitamin, then condemning dishonesty undoubtedly guarantees a daily megadose. Unfortunately, at least for those who crave self-indulgent outrage, the anti-lying case is less than 100 percent compelling. It is a quagmire of the first order, if only because those who cherish frankness also usually confess to lying. Hannah Arendt once suggested that lies are a necessary and justifiable tool of the statesman's trade. Formulating damnation criteria invites mind-boggling paradoxes, and strident defenders of truth-telling, with scant exception, admit that falsehoods are “sometimes” permitted for “good” reasons. And what might be these “good reasons”? Who can say for sure? Centuries of erudite scholarship on this point might be encapsulated as “Lying to me is bad, but I can consent to deceiving others for noble purposes, as artfully decided by myself.”