_____________________________________________________
We now live in a post-truth Presidency. It is simply expected that Presidents will
lie about matters of war and foreign policy.
“The George W Bush Department of Justice argued before the US Supreme
Court that his administration required the right ‘to give out false
information… incomplete information and even misinformation’ whenever it deemed
necessary. This claim went even further
beyond even then Department of Defense official Arthur Sylvester’s famous
formulation offered on behalf of President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis,
when he claimed, ‘It’s inherent in the government’s right, if necessary, to lie
to save itself.’”
Ben Bradlee once ruminated, “Just think for a minute how
history might have changed if Americans had known then that their leaders felt
the [Vietnam] war was going to hell in a handbasket? In the next seven years, thousands of
American lives and more thousands of Asian lives would have been saved. The country might never have lost faith in
its leaders.”
John Quincy Adams once stated, “Wherever the standard of
freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her
[America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of
monsters to destroy. She is the
well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator of only
her own… She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her
own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve
herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and
intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors
and usurp the standard of freedom… She might become the dictatress of the
world; she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.”
Alterman argues that part of the problem is that most US
citizens already have opinions about other world areas, opinions that are not
rooted in fact, and those opinions are reinforced by a news media that rarely
explains the complexities of foreign affairs.
“To complicate matters, this pseudo-environment is further corrupted by
the manner in which it is perceived.
Citizens have only limited time and attention to devote to issues of
public concern. News is designed for
mass consumption, and, hence, the media must employ a relatively simple
vocabulary and linear story line to discuss highly complex and decidedly
nonlinear situations. The competition
for readership (and advertising dollars) drives the press to present news
reports in ways that sensationalize and oversimplify, while more significant
information goes unreported and unremarked upon. Given both the economic and professional
limitations of the practice of journalism, Lippman argued, news ‘comes [to us]
helter-skelter.’ This is fine for a
baseball box score, a transatlantic flight, or the death of a monarch. But where the picture is more nuanced, ‘as
for example in the matter of a success of a policy or the social conditions
among a foreign people – where the real answer is neither yes or no, but subtle
and a matter of balanced evidence,’ then journalism ‘causes no end of
derangement, misunderstanding and even misinterpretation.’ And here, it must be added, Lippman was
identifying a problem that has since increased in both time and scope, as media
sensationalism and public apathy have increased manyfold since the publication
of his prophetic work.
Lippmann’s pseudo-environment is not composed only of the information we receive; it consists, in equal measure, of what Lippman terms, ‘the pictures in our heads.’ Voters react to the news through the lens of personal history containing certain stereotypes, predispositions, and emotional associations that determing their interpretations. We emphasize that which confirms our original beliefs and disregard or denigrate what might contradict them….On the one hand, Americans carry an unrealistic picture of the world ‘in their heads’ – one based on their faith in their own divine direction, disinterested altruism, and democratic bone fides, rather than the realities of politics, force, and diplomacy. But they remain immune to education regarding these realities, in part because of the power these myths continue to enjoy in our education system, media and larger social discourse, as well as the failures inherent in the practice of democracy. These faileurs, moreover, are exaggerated in the American case by a particular distaste for the practice of power politics and a media that has insufficient commercial incentive to provide the basics of civil literacy to its audience. Even those presidents with the best of intentions come to view deception as an unavoidable consequence of a system that simply cannot integrate the unpleasant realities of international diplomacy. However preferable it might be to tell the truth, the short term costs of lying, given that the culture seems to expect them, are negligible. And as Friedrich Nietzsche instructed, these temptations are virtually impossible to resist. While people may desire ‘the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth [they are] indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences, [and are] even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths.’ The long-term costs of lying – at least at the moment the lie is being told – are almost always invisible. The ultimate costs for this easy calculation, however, are considerable, not only to the nation, and to the cause of democracy, but also to the aspirations and legacies of the presidents themselves.
Whether this situation is remediable depends on one of two possibilities: either future presidents become convinced that the long-term cost of deception outweighs its short-term benefits, or the public matures to the point of seeking to educate itself about the need for complicated arrangements in international politics that do not comport with the nation’s caricatured notion of itself as a force for innocence and benevolence the world over. The obvious solution would be to convince US presidents the value of substituting a long-term strategic vision in place of their present-minded, short-term tactical view. But ‘Nothing in politics is more difficult than taking the long view, ‘notes the reporter Ronald Brownstein. ‘For politicians, distant gain is rarely a persuasive reason to endure immediate pain. Political scientists would say the system has a bias toward the present over the future. Parents might say politicians behave like perpetual teenagers. The problem, for politicians as much as teenagers, is that the future has a pesky habit of arriving.’”
Lippmann’s pseudo-environment is not composed only of the information we receive; it consists, in equal measure, of what Lippman terms, ‘the pictures in our heads.’ Voters react to the news through the lens of personal history containing certain stereotypes, predispositions, and emotional associations that determing their interpretations. We emphasize that which confirms our original beliefs and disregard or denigrate what might contradict them….On the one hand, Americans carry an unrealistic picture of the world ‘in their heads’ – one based on their faith in their own divine direction, disinterested altruism, and democratic bone fides, rather than the realities of politics, force, and diplomacy. But they remain immune to education regarding these realities, in part because of the power these myths continue to enjoy in our education system, media and larger social discourse, as well as the failures inherent in the practice of democracy. These faileurs, moreover, are exaggerated in the American case by a particular distaste for the practice of power politics and a media that has insufficient commercial incentive to provide the basics of civil literacy to its audience. Even those presidents with the best of intentions come to view deception as an unavoidable consequence of a system that simply cannot integrate the unpleasant realities of international diplomacy. However preferable it might be to tell the truth, the short term costs of lying, given that the culture seems to expect them, are negligible. And as Friedrich Nietzsche instructed, these temptations are virtually impossible to resist. While people may desire ‘the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth [they are] indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences, [and are] even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths.’ The long-term costs of lying – at least at the moment the lie is being told – are almost always invisible. The ultimate costs for this easy calculation, however, are considerable, not only to the nation, and to the cause of democracy, but also to the aspirations and legacies of the presidents themselves.
Whether this situation is remediable depends on one of two possibilities: either future presidents become convinced that the long-term cost of deception outweighs its short-term benefits, or the public matures to the point of seeking to educate itself about the need for complicated arrangements in international politics that do not comport with the nation’s caricatured notion of itself as a force for innocence and benevolence the world over. The obvious solution would be to convince US presidents the value of substituting a long-term strategic vision in place of their present-minded, short-term tactical view. But ‘Nothing in politics is more difficult than taking the long view, ‘notes the reporter Ronald Brownstein. ‘For politicians, distant gain is rarely a persuasive reason to endure immediate pain. Political scientists would say the system has a bias toward the present over the future. Parents might say politicians behave like perpetual teenagers. The problem, for politicians as much as teenagers, is that the future has a pesky habit of arriving.’”
“If the accounts in this book teach us anything, it is that
presidents cannot lie about major political events that have potentially
serious ramifications- particularly those relating to war and peace – with
impunity. These lies inevitably turn
into monsters that strangle their creators.
Had FDR told the truth about Yalta to the country, it is far more likely
that the US would have participated in the creation of the kind of world
community he envisioned when he made his ultimately counterproductive secret
arrangements. John Kennedy’s deception
about the nature of the deal to which he agreed to ensure the removal of Soviet
missiles from Cuba also proved enormously detrimental to his hope to create a
lasting, stable peace in the context of Cold War competition. Lyndon Johnson destroyed not only his
ambitious hopes to create a ‘Great Society,’ but also his own presidency and
most of his political reason for being.
And Ronald Reagan, through is lies about Central America, created a dynamic
through which his advisers believe they had a right to initiate a secret,
illegal foreign and military policy whose aims were almost perfectly
contradictory to the president’s stated aims in such crucial areas as dealing
with governments deemed to be terrorist.
When it was finally revealed, this disjunction paralyzed US diplomacy
and nearly caused the downfall of the Reagan administration as well. In 1992, it had the effect of undermining
George Bush’s second presidential candidacy.
In a better world, future US Presidents would learn the obvious lessons from the experience of their predecessors: Protect geunuine secrets by refusing to answer certain questions, certainly. Put the best face on your own actions and those of the politicians you support, of course. Create a zone of privacy for yourself and your family that is declared off-limits to all public inquiry. But do not, under any circumstances, lie."
Posts
