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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (214485)	1/24/2007 7:30:57 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Presidential Lies ______________________________________________________________ Carl M. Cannon, the author of "Untruth and Consequences," talks about the lies our presidents tell us—and the ones they tell themselves... theatlantic.com <<... Is [Bush's] disregard for the truth worse than that displayed by presidents who preceded him? Well, that’s the money question, isn’t it? I guess I have two answers, which may sound like a cop-out, but at least each has the virtue of being somewhat brief. First: I came to no firm conclusion about where Bush fits into the tradition of presidential lying, so I wrote what I knew—trusting the readers would sort it out for themselves so long as I gave them enough facts and context to do that. My second, less diplomatic, response is this: I think George W. Bush is essentially a truthful person. He’s often blunt to the point of nearly being tactless. But sometimes his certitude in the rightness of his motives—and I don’t question his motives—slops over into certitude that his judgment is right, which is an entirely different question. That word you used—it’s in my story as well—“disregard” is key. If a president doesn’t show a proper regard for the facts (and, admittedly, the facts are ever-changing) he ends up being less than fully honest with himself, and therefore less than fully honest with the American people. There are cases in which this might be worse than lying. Some of the people I quote in my article make that argument about Bush’s presidency, and I don’t disagree with them...>>... <<...Bush’s problem, it seems, is more about his inability to really face the facts. I don’t have a good word for it—after all, it took me 8,000 words to get to this point. But I would say Bush’s problem with truth-telling is his inability to face things squarely. To be truthful with himself...>>