by Jessica Rettig

Martin Jay discusses his new book 'The Virtues of Mendacity'

Politicians get a bad rap for their sometimes elusive relationship with the truth. Yet Martin Jay, author of The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics, says there are times when lying may be the right thing to do. After compiling the arguments of political philosophers through the ages, Jay, a history professor at the University of California-Berkeley, concludes that the American public should focus less on whether politicians are being truthful and more on the outcomes of their policies. He recently talked with U.S. News about why Americans should not always expect to get the truth from political leaders. Excerpts:

When is lying acceptable?

Well, I don't think there's any single rule. There are, perhaps, more moments when lying is functional rather than dysfunctional. For example, in the movie Inglourious Basterds, a peasant is asked whether or not there are Jews hiding underneath his floorboards. He ultimately tells the truth, and the SS man immediately comes and shoots them. It would have been, on some level, maybe more dangerous, maybe more courageous, but nonetheless, morally justified to lie. There are other instances when it's clear that to create coalitions among partners who don't quite share all the same interests and values, it's necessary to pretend that there is the commonality of those values and interests. We see this even with primary campaigns: candidates who have been calling each other names and decrying the possibility of supporting their opponents then, after one is selected, all rallying around that candidate. Either they were lying before or after, but it's clear that there is some tacit obstruction of truths to create a kind of coalition.

How does America compare to other nations in its virtues of truth-telling?

Certainly in the last decade or so, we've become increasingly obsessed by it as an issue. America began with the hope that it would be more transparent, that accountability would be more explicit, that in a democracy people were more prone to be truth-tellers than they were in an aristocratic, or oligarchic, or monarchical system of government. There's a premium being placed on plain talking, on being honest; you think of Honest Abe, or George Washington, and that famous myth about felling the cherry tree.

Is lying more or less acceptable in a democracy than in a totalitarian government?

There's a so-called big lie that we associate with totalitarianism. In perhaps the worst days of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, a good part of the citizenry was fooled by government propaganda into believing they were living in prosperous, and in some ways justifiable, societies. So those are countries in which the big lie worked, for a while at least. In the United States, luckily, we don't have the capacity for that due to a relatively free press and a pluralist political system. What we have instead are many different competing half-lies, spins, rhetoric, or positions that hide the truth. In a way, it's healthy to have this very mixed combination of truths, half-truths, and the occasional outright lies, rather than to have a big lie or a single truth in which one party claims, or one person claims, to have a monopoly on the truth. I'm always very nervous when a politician claims that he or she alone has personal integrity, authenticity, and is a truth teller, and all opponents are scoundrels and liars.

So, absolute truth doesn't exist in politics?

Absolute truth is very hard in any context, really. Politics is not an arena in which absolute truth is the goal. Politics is made up of promises about the future, and we don't know what the truth of the future is going to be. It's also made up of narratives. Narratives, by definition, are always, in a way, semi-representative of what is the case. Also, in politics, we don't do what we do in a court of law. We don't swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There are lots of things about politics that allow us to appreciate aesthetic and rhetorical qualities that are very different from seeking the truth in a courtroom, or a scientific experiment, or a scholarly debate.

Are politicians' lies ever more justified than those of the everyday citizen?

Politicians often have responsibilities, which allow them, at times, to delay the truth. Or, especially when they're representing us in an adversarial relationship with another country, they may be very sparing with the truth. Certainly in diplomatic circumstances, and obviously in wartime, politicians who are responsible for protecting us can withhold the truth. We had no obligation to tell the Nazis where we were going to land on D-Day. Having said that, there are many examples of politicians who hide behind those justifications as an excuse not to tell us truths that we are indeed owed, and those politicians often do pay a price. My argument certainly is not a defense of politics as inherently hypocritical. I think the default position of politics, as in life, has to be telling the truth, simply because lies don't work unless they're told against the backdrop of the assumption that people are, in fact, telling truths.

Do you look at the government differently after writing this book?

There's no policy implication that comes out of this. I'm not urging governments to lie, and I'm not urging the citizenry to be complacent about mendacity. But what I'm trying to say is that it's more important to focus on the issues, on the policies, and on the effects these have on people's lives, than to constantly look for discrepancies in promises and performance, or to look for inconsistencies in a person's career. We need to see how citizens are affected by the policies that our politicians pursue. That's far more important than looking for a perfect politician. You can have an absolutely incorruptible figure who is a fool. And you can have somebody who is morally complex, and yet his policies help people more.

Why should America's leaders read your book?

It does give them at least some understanding of the complexities, and it may help them back away from simplistic accusations. Another thing about lying in politics is the inevitability of people accusing their opponents of lying. It's just one thing that politicians have to understand is part of the game or the life in the world they inhabit. We need to focus more on policies and their outcomes than on this kind of accusation of mendacity, which gets us nowhere.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

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