Truth deficiency is no joke

At a public gathering, a former politician said, now that he was not running for an election he could tell the truth. The assembled body of community elite reflexively or politely chuckled. It was like the whole room was acknowledging with their laughter a well-accepted axiom. Politicians will say anything or nothing to get into office and maintain power.

The presenter, I believe, is an honorable man. I have every reason to think that he is a law-abiding citizen, a loving husband and a concerned father. His history in business does not suggest he was anything but forthright and fair. As a churchgoing man, I have to assume the sermons he heard throughout his life spoke often of the importance of being honest with God and man. His record as a public official was filled with reasonable solutions to complex problems. His goodness is certainly equally true of the vast majority of all elected officials and individuals working in all levels of government. This goodness speaks to those neighbors and friends on local school boards or city councils. This trust also moves up the line of authority. But somewhere, still, something is seriously wrong when a former respected leader at a national level admits that running for elections limited his ability to speak the truth.

It is hard to assume exactly what anyone really feels inside when he opens his mouth and words come out. Did he really mean that in his career in politics he hadn't been totally honest? Was this an admission that even mighty people can't handle the pressure to win? Or is the political process so polarizing that no one can be as frank as they would want for fear of misinterpretation or exploitation by one side or another? Why speak truthfully when your opponents twist your words into lies anyway for their benefit? Or was it a commentary about how the disease of lying has infected our society's moral core? Campaign pledges are the start of deceit. Will this disease prove fatal to the body politic Americana?

If taken at face value, the semi-joke is a pretty sorry story. Thinking about it, the audience in the room and democracy in the country would have been better served to groan with horror. Maybe everyone there was in on the secret and that is why they snickered. Were they already inside the lie, so the old wink, wink was in play. Is this an admission that lying is part of the fundamental character of those who seek public office, or is it a necessity much like a good spy who must tell falsehoods to fulfill his mission?

What has happened to our democracy that makes truth so difficult or unusual? This is particularly so when the politician is forever running for public office. Freshmen officials often are tutored first about how to get re-elected. Their critical initial lesson is not how to improve Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. It is how to stay in office.