Lies when unnecessary are lethal to public confidence, as if lies are told simply out of habit
“I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win,” said Chris Christie as he announced the end of his presidential campaign before the first votes were cast in the Republican primaries.
The premise of the remark is not highly contested, that success in politics requires a level of dishonesty. Christie thus characterized his campaign’s lack of success as the price paid for honesty.
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Christie’s remark came at a time when untruths — by commission or omission — are prominent in both Canada and the United States, inviting a consideration of the damage lies do when manifestly unnecessary.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau failed, yet again, to take a trip without stirring up controversy. His office announced that he would be on a family vacation in Jamaica and would be paying for his accommodations (not for travel and security, which the government mandates and provides for all prime ministers). That turned out not to be true. Massively not true, as Trudeau stayed in a luxury villa that would ordinarily cost some $10,000/night. It was a gift from wealthy old family friends who owned the resort.
Why lie about who was paying for the accommodations? After Trudeau’s previous trip to the Aga Khan’s private island ran afoul of ethics guidelines — the latter was receiving grants from the federal government — the PMO had to know that questions would be asked. So why lie when the truth would eventually come out; sooner rather than later, in fact?
On Trudeau’s infamous Tofino trip for the first Truth and Reconciliation Day, his office initially lied too, claiming that the prime minister had meetings in Ottawa when in fact he was winging westward to the beach. That came out as soon as his plane was in the air and tracked by online observers. There was also the pointless obfuscation about what suite the prime minister used at the London hotel for the Queen’s funeral. That too eventually came out. To no one’s great surprise, the prime minister had the $6,000/night suite.
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Why lie — or at least avoid telling the truth — about where the prime minister is, and where he is staying? It will be discovered.
Even more perplexing is the absurd spectacle unfolding in Washington, where the secretary of defense was in the hospital ICU for three days before he told the president. Lloyd Austin handed off his duties to his deputy, who was running the Pentagon from her vacation in Puerto Rico, entirely unaware that her boss was not “working from home,” but was hospitalized.
Secretary Austin tried to pass it all off as a slip in communication, but anyone familiar with the enormously bloated security apparatus deployed for American officials knows better. Austin could not book a dinner reservation without military and security personnel surveying the restaurant. There are likely a dozen officials in the White House situation room and Pentagon who are charged with knowing how to reach the defense secretary within seconds in an emergency. Only an active directive to deceive — or at least conceal — can plausibly explain how Austin managed to be gone for days without the president knowing.
Why though would he conceal where he was? Is it imaginable that the defense secretary could be in the ICU of a military hospital without it being noticed eventually? There is no character flaw in going to hospital for treatment. A cancer diagnosis is not an indication of incapacity.
The consequence of these unnecessary and foolish lies is significant. The nature of politics is that there are contested facts, diagnoses and policy prescriptions. It is not rare that political promises are modified, abandoned or contradicted. So what is said is not always done.
Consider the two presidents Bush. The elder argued that circumstances required that, for the good of the country, he should break his promise: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” His son maintained that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When such were never found, the protesters chanted: “Bush lied, people died.” Those were momentous policy decisions and eroded public confidence in the honesty of political leaders.
The petty falsehoods of Trudeau and Austin are, in certain respects, worse still. There are no policy disputes at play. There are no new circumstances to evaluate. And there are no complexities to understand. Either you are paying for your villa or it is a gift. Either you are at home or in the ICU. Lies on petty matters are pellucid prevarications, and all the more devastating for their straightforward simplicity.
Lies when thought necessary are still lies. But lies when unnecessary are lethal to public confidence, as if lies are told simply out of habit, or that not telling the truth is the default setting. Those who show themselves dishonest in small things will be considered untrustworthy in large things, and that matters a great deal.
National Post
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