The Rules of Lying in American Politics

Or….how to lie without the media scrutinizing those lies.

Robert Waldman over at The American Prospect writes about these rules, illuminating how it is that the media chooses the lies it wants to chase down:

The first rule is that lying about yourself is worse than lying about your opponent. Candidates routinely fib about their opponents’ records and histories with little notice. Perhaps it’s because reporters presume that in the rough-and-tumble of a campaign, a certain degree of hyperbole is to be expected and therefore can’t be judged too harshly. If you claim, though, to have done something you haven’t, reporters will usually be all over you. Look at what happened to O’Donnell’s fellow Senate candidates Mark Kirk in Illinois, who was caught inflating his military record in multiple ways, and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who said at various times that he had served “in” Vietnam when really he had served “during” Vietnam. This is the kind of lie reporters find outrageous — when candidates make themselves look more heroic or accomplished than they actually are. A lie about your opponent may draw attention, but the discussion will be about whether the attack was out of line; in other words, what you did. A lie about yourself, on the other hand, will spur a discussion about who you are.

Which leads to the second rule: Lying about personal matters is worse than lying about policy. That may be because reporters think policy is less important than “character,” but whatever the cause, candidates can, with few exceptions, get away with murder when it comes to policy. O’Donnell herself has benefited from this double standard; lots of people heard about her comments about witchcraft, but nearly no one knows that she revived the claim that the Affordable Care Act will create “death panels” — perhaps the most despicable lie to have coursed through our political bloodstream in recent years.

Go read the whole thing. Christine O’Donnell is the example of choice throughout this article, which results in a media narrative largely about her outrageous statements (not so much about her character yet), but giving her a pass on her policy lies. And this, of course, works across all media. The fact that she is lying about “death panels” is nowhere near as important as the witchcraft BS. I wish I knew why the Fourth Estate seems to think that lying about policy — really the one area that is at all indicative about how you’ll govern — deserves a pass. I wouldn’t mind that they seem to have decided that holding them accountable=illuminating character if they would treat lies about policy with the same breathless outrage.

The failure to hold people accountable to lies about policy leads to certain groups of people having their own facts. A thing that Waldman has also written about recently — noting that most of the inaccuracies being pushed benefit the right. A thing that shows how dominated by wingnut narratives our entire media has become. In large part, I think because lying about policy doesn’t count in the business of holding the powerful accountable.