As usual for any political speech in our day and age, the "facts" were a bit cloudy in the things claimed by the POTUS in his State of the Union speech. The same holds true for one of the counter-claims made by Sen. Webb. See Here. Our friends at FactCheck.org have dug deep into the claims and unearthed some, shall we say, "flexibility" with the facts.
What do you make of this? Sure, there's the cynical claim that this is just a symptom of modern politics constantly playing the "spin" game (and that's most certainly true). But, what else can we ask here? Does telling a "half-truth" constitute a lie? If not, why not? What would we define as the basis for lying? And how does shaping and bending facts to be the most favorable for your position differ from that definition?
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What constitutes a lie? Well, I think that a lie is the opposite of truth. However, there is a huge grey area in-between the two poles. There are lies of omission, by leaving out facts, and lies of blatant disregard of facts. In addition, the person you lie to must want the truth. All that said, do I think the politicians are wrong? I say they are not. They are not making up facts (for the most part), they are playing the facts and the crowds to each other. When looked at in different lights, the same fact could be positive to both parties. Americans allow politicians to bend the truth, because the truth is not what Americans want, they want the sugarcoated, bent in the best possible light truth. The fact of the matter is that to me, lying requires intent to deceive as well as the changing or omitting of essential facts to the claim. Bush, in saying that he increased the number of jobs is not a lie, just because he left out the fact that he also lost jobs. All together, he did increase the total number of jobs, even if he also lost some. But if he said that 10 million new jobs had been created this year, and 15 million had also been lost, then he would be lying, because the net result is not the same as the claim. Shaping the facts to meet a goal is not a lie, because as long as the twisting doesn’t snap the truth, it’s still somewhat the truth. And as long as then American people accept and don’t content the jaded truths fed to them everyday, it’s socially acceptable.
As a personal rule, I try to be transparent. I don't like spin. Maybe I get too blunt sometimes, but I think people trust you more when you tell the whole truth. It may hurt to hear it, but in the long-run, it's better for everyone involved.
Maybe I'm just young and naive in the way of politics, but I fully intend to become a Senator someday and be an example to change the public's opinion on our government. Politicians are at the bottom of the list with lawyers on how much the public trusts them and I think it's because of all the spin. We should be able to trust our government.
Before we point fingers, we must also examine our own response if we were to be in the same situation. This doesn't justify our or their actions, but it does allow for a critical perspective in analyzing an action as right or wrong.
In Bush/Webb's situation, we do not know 1) the pressures they faced on what to say, 2) information they were given regarding the economics, 3) what they had written down in their notes, and other factors that might have affected their words. As such, we must still take them at their words while considering these outside factors to perhaps understand their motive.
The basis for lying as defined by the USAFA honor handbook is making an assertion with the intent to deceive or mislead. If Bush/Webb had intent to lie (to deceive), and then acted on that intent, then we can verify our politicians were in effect "lying." The degree to which they lied (how much, topic, degree of accuracy, etc) does not change that fact.
This is a classic example of why it is so important to do background checks on all issues presented. Ideally, people would always give the whole truth and leave nothing out, but realistically, whenever somebody is trying to make a case for something, they are going to say the arguments that benefit their side and not the arguments that go against their side. This is not just true in politics, but in business, in the courts, in academia, and even in the military. For example, on an OPR or Form 94, people will always choose to write “Top performer in the given activity” as opposed to “Number 1 performer out of 2 performers in the given activity.” However, this could be one good reason for debates, especially political debates, because it provides an official forum for each side to not only speak highly of themselves, but also to pick apart the downfalls of their opponent. Hence, even though everyone will always try to make their argument sound the best, I still wish we did not have to search out additional details and background information on every political claim, annual stock report, or squadron statistics.
Facts are facts. People interrupt the facts differently depending on what they are looking for. Using facts that seem to support your position and ignoring facts that don't is common. Seeing that 7.2 million jobs were create could be seen as very good for Republicans but Democrats look back and say that Clinton created more jobs in 6 years than Bush (I'm not sure if that is correct, but I'm just using it as an example). It is in a politician’s best interest to make themselves look the best with supportive facts. This is just part of the political system so politicians and their parties get reelected. While these "half-truths" seem to be lies by not being completely truthful and not showing all the facts, it is part of our confirmation bias to look for facts that support our position. In a perfect world we would avoid ever using "half-truths" however we often use them when something is on the line for us (like getting elected) we tend to make ourselves look the best. The same thing happens with people on "facebook" or "myspace". We tend to put up facts that make us look the most appealing while ignoring things that may not look as good. If manipulation of facts is considered "half-truths" and "half-truths" are considered lies, then manipulation of facts is lying.
In speeches with a large audience, such as the State of the Union Address, I like to think of them as a puzzle. Except with this puzzle of the truth (reality), the average audience member has a very small notion of what the completed puzzle should look like. In other words, he can't see the picture on the box that shows you how the completed puzzle should look. The speaker knows this and also knows that she or he has limited time to convey the picture on the box as he sees it. And, in the case of the State of the Union Address, the speaker indeed knows more about the reality of the picture than the average listener.
So, during this limited time, it is the speaker's job to convey large amounts of information in an abridged format. These pieces of abridged information can be put together by the audience to build their picture of reality. Of course, each person will perceive things in his or her own way and thus come out with a slightly different perception of reality than her neighbor. The differences in perception increase as the amiguity of information increases.
Ultimately, it takes more than a 1-hour speech to describe the complete truth on the "state of the Union" to an audience with limited background knowledge of the intricacies of government programs. Thus, the speaker has a responsibility to offer glimpses of the truth, whether good or bad, in proportion to the broader truth of reality. Over time, the audience will judge for themselves if the pieces given to them by the speaker do or do not fit together to form a representative picture of reality. If the "half-truths" come together to make a lie, that will be evident to the audience. Yet if the necessarily-abridged pieces of fact create a picture that consistently matches reality, then they are certainly not lies at all. Ultimately, half-truths can be used for both depicting a better picture of reality in limited time; or they can be used as a tool for deception. The latter should become evident more quickly as people dig deeper toward the truth. Yet if every "half-truth" or "partial truth" is viewed as a lie, then we are all guilty of lying with everything we say because of our insufficiency as humans to grasp all truth and speak it without fault.
I think lying is doing something to intentionally deceive someone. Therefore, half truths, and using only the data that supports you, when in fact you are not right, is indeed lying, and it is wrong. Leaving out information to say what you want is just as wrong as saying the wrong thing. However, I do not believe that politicians are wrong in their deceit. The reason for this is because, in order to lie you must be deceiving your audience purposefully, though they are, Americans have come to realize that they must take everything a politician says with a grain of salt because of the nature of their job. They have to strive to get reelected, which means outdoing the other people, of course they will try to sell themselves.
When the care salesman tells you he has the best car on the block, maybe he’s lying, maybe he isn’t, but the public knows that he may not be telling the truth and they are able to defend and protect themselves from what he says b thinking critically. The same goes for politicians, the public knows that for the most part they are selling themselves, just at the car salesman has to sell the car. The common understanding of deceit means that people are not being lied to, they are instead hearing a sales pitch. Having people critically think about what politicians say is actually a good thing, it means that they can not just stand up tell us what we want to hear and convince us to blindly follow. It keeps the politicians in check. Is it not ironic that the lying (selling) has actually led to keeping them in check? I do not think what the politicians do is wrong, only because the people know that not everything can be taken blindly. This attitude promotes accountability for the people in electing the officials to run the most powerful nation on Earth, and I think that is a good thing.
i think part of the responibility is with the listner. is it not the truth that you must take everything a politician says with a grain of salt?
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