The Moral Obligation of Politicians to Tell The Truth

I ran across this small, but rather interesting article on CNN.

Superficially, this article speaks about Arnold's "historical accuracy" in his speech to the recent Republican National Convention. However, it raises a very interesting, and important question for us to consider - to what degree should politicians be held to speak the truth?

Those with a sense of absolute "rightness" will no doubt argue that the politicians should be held to a higher standard of truthfulness than the rest of the population. Others, will argue that "it's fine for a politician to bend the truth a bit", recognizing that there are occasions where a specific presentation of facts will allow the speaker to be more persuasive in arguing their position.

Arnold states:

"I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes."

There's a couple of points here - I think -

The historians can argue until they are blue in the face about whether Arnold in fact saw those tanks. Perhaps he did; perhaps not - beyond being a mild exaggeration of his experiences, I'm not too worried about it.

The spin that is much more worrisome is the second sentence - "I saw communism with my own eyes". No, you didn't, Arnold. If you saw anything, it was the occupation of a country by a military, totalitarian regime. Communism, even in the "Marxist-Leninist" form that the Soviets followed is not necessarily either.

A brief investigation of the various US military occupations of countries around the world could easily lead one to make the same argument about "Capitalism" - especially in various countries in Central/South America (Chile; El Salvador; Panama to name a few)

Arnold has engaged in a very simple, but trivial argument - the pot calling the kettle black. A critical review of the other side of the equation.

Did Arnold lie? Perhaps not intentionally. The measure of truthfulness that we must apply to our politicians must be tempered by a careful evaluation of their motives. The Republicans are trying to retain their grip on the White House - they will say just about anything that they believe the public will accept as "reasonable".

In Alberta, Ralph Klein recently declared Alberta "Debt Free". That was perhaps a much more blatant lie. Alberta will be debt free if, and only if a series of preconditions come true:

1. The revenue surplus at the end of the year is in excess of $3 billion.
2. The government in fact applies all of that $3 billion dollars towards the debt
3. Interest charges accrued between now and then do not push the net sum over the size of the surplus.

There is a good chance of those preconditions occurring next March or so, but those are preconditions, not facts. What was Ralph's motivation in making such a declaration? Given the timing, and a few other things, one has to suspect that it is a matter of Ralph wanting to set the stage for his next election campaign. Given that the election is likely to occur before next March, I would say that Ralph has engaged in the most cynical form of political lie - he didn't say that the debt _would_ be paid off, he declared it was. Most people are likely to take such words at face value.

George W. Bush has made many statements about the reasons for invading Iraq. As time has gone by, the various reasons have apparently evaporated into the desert winds. Did Bush lie? Perhaps - he may have believed that he had accurate information. I don't know. However, as time has gone on, and the justifications presented have lost any substance, Bush has fallen back onto arguments where the 'end justifies the means'. (Basically, "we deposed a nasty dictator, things can only improve now") I worry about such sophistry coming from politicians. Not only does it suggest to me that the speaker knew they were full of fiction earlier on in the saga, but it also suggests that they believe that the public is largely a bunch of idiots that won't see through the fiction.

So - what is the standard we should hold our politicians to? I would argue that as citizens, we cannot expect much better from our politicians than we currently get. The corridors of power create an environment where it is often easier to lie in the name of retaining power than it is to deal with the truth. It is our job as the electorate to view the pronouncements of our politicians with caution. Look between the lines of what is said, and try to determine what underlying motives influence the statements. If we find our political leaders are engaging in egregious lies, it is up to us to vote those people out of power. Voting along partisan lines is foolish many times. No matter how fervently one may believe in the goals of a party, if its leadership is filling the population with falsehoods, that party will never fulfil its stated goals.