By Michael Blake
Those who dislike a president tend to emphasize the frequency or skill with which he lies.
During the Trump administration, for instance, The Washington Post kept a running database of the president’s lies and deceptions – with the final tally running to over 30,000 falsehoods. President Joe Biden’s critics have insisted that he, too, is a liar – and that the media is complicit in ignoring his supposed frequent deception of the American people.
The frequency of these criticisms would seem to indicate that most people do not want a president who lies. And yet a recent study of presidential deception found that all American presidents – from Washington to Trump – have told lies, and knowingly so, in their public statements. The most effective of presidents have sometimes been effective precisely because they were skilled at manipulation and deception.
As a political philosopher with a focus on how people try to reason together through political disagreement, I argue that what matters most is not whether a president lies, but when and why he does so.
Presidents who lie to save their own public image or career are unlikely to be forgiven. However, those who appear to lie in the service of the public are often celebrated.
The morality of deception
Why, though, are lies thought so wrongful in the first instance?
Philosopher Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century, provided one powerful account of the wrongness of lying. For Kant, lying was wrong in much the same way that threats and coercion are wrong. All of these override the autonomous will of another person, and treat that person as a mere tool. When a gunman uses threats to coerce a person to do a particular act, he disrespects that person’s rational agency. Lies are similarly disrespectful to rational agency: One’s decision has been manipulated, so that the act is no longer one’s own.
Kant regarded any lie as immoral – even one told to a murderer at the door.
Modern-day philosophers have often endorsed versions of Kant’s account while seeking exceptions from its rigidness. One common theme is the necessity of the deception for achieving an important political goal. For example, a political leader who gives honest answers about a forthcoming military operation would likely imperil that operation – and most citizens of the state engaging in that military action would not want that. The key is that people might accept such deception, after the fact, because of what that deception made possible.
During World War II, the British government sought to deceive the Nazi command about its plans for invasion – which entailed lying even to British allies. The moral imperative of defeating Nazi Germany is generally thought to be important enough to justify this sort of deception.
This example also illustrates another theme: Deception might be permitted when it is in the context of an adversarial relationship in which truth-telling should not be expected. Lying to one’s own citizens may or may not be justifiable – but there seems to be very little wrong about lying to one’s enemies during wartime.
Honorable lies?
These ideas might be used in defense of some presidential lies.
During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Hitler’s expansionism in Europe was a threat to the liberal democratic project itself, but he faced an electorate without any will to intervene in a European war. Roosevelt chose to insist publicly that he was opposed to any intervention – while doing everything he could to prepare for war and to covertly help the British cause.
As early as 1948, historian Thomas Bailey noted that Roosevelt had made a calculated choice to both prepare for war and insist he was doing no such thing. To be open about his view of Hitler would have likely led to his defeat in the 1940 election.
Before Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln made similar calculations. Lincoln’s lies regarding his negotiations with the Confederacy – described by Meg Mott, a professor of political theory, as being “devious” – may have been instrumental in preserving the United States as a single country.
Lincoln was willing to open peace negotiations with the Confederacy, knowing that much of his own party thought that only unconditional surrender by the South would settle the question of slavery. At one point, Lincoln wrote a note to his own party asserting – falsely – that there were “no peace commissioners” being sent to a conference with the Confederacy.
A member of the Congress later noted that, in the absence of that note, the 13th Amendment – which ended the practice of chattel slavery – would not have been passed.
Good lies and bad lies
The problem, of course, is that a great many presidential lies cannot be so easily linked to important purposes.
William Philpott/AFP via Getty Images
President Bill Clinton’s lies about his sexual activities were either simply self-serving or told to preserve his presidency.
Similarly, President Richard Nixon’s insistence that he knew nothing about the Watergate break-in was most likely a lie. John Dean, Nixon’s legal counsel, confirmed years later that the president knew about, and approved of, the plan to rob the Democratic National Committee headquarters. This scandal eventually ended Nixon’s presidency.
In both cases, these presidents faced a significant threat to their presidencies – and chose deception to save not the nation, but their own power.
President Biden, President Trump and truth
It is likely that President Trump lied more than most presidents. What is striking about his lies, however, is that they have tended to be told to defend his own self-image or political viability rather than in service of some central political good.
Indeed, some of President Trump’s more implausible lies seemed best understood as tests of loyalty; those in his circle who repeated his most obvious lies demonstrated their loyalty to President Trump in doing so. Most recently, he has attacked as disloyal those members of the Republican Party who have not repeated his false claims about electoral fraud.
Recent studies indicate that President Biden, thus far, has not shown himself equal to President Trump in his deceptiveness. He has, however, made deceptive and misleading claims on a number of topics, ranging from the costs of particular policies to his own history and early life. These lies seem somewhat unlike those told by Lincoln and by Roosevelt; they seem generally told in the interests of making a rhetorical point more powerful rather than as necessary means to an otherwise unobtainable political goal. They seem, in that respect, less morally justifiable than these earlier falsehoods.
A justification for these lies might be found with reference to practices which – like warfare or politics – necessarily involve conflict and gamesmanship. No one would expect honesty from the enemy side during warfare, and perhaps one should not from opponents in politics either. Some political philosophers have thought that, when politics becomes an adversarial game, politicians might be forgiven when they seek to deceive the other party. President Biden might rely upon this idea, and could note that the Republican Party is less open to bipartisan negotiation than at any time in its history.
Even this last justification, however, may not be enough. Lying to one’s political opponents might be permitted in an adversarial context. The lies told by presidents are often addressed to constituents, and such deception seems harder to justify.
And finally, even the most important of lies must be believed for it to be justifiable; a lie that is immediately recognized as such is unlikely to achieve the goal justifying that lie. This is an increasingly difficult burden. Modern presidents find it more challenging to lie without having their lies recognized as untrue than presidents serving before the advent of social media and dedicated fact-checking.
If presidents must sometimes lie to defend important political values, then, it seems as though the good president must be both able to lie and able to lie well.
Michael Blake is Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. 
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
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Jackson1955 says
Best President last 50 years was President Obama!
Glad that Pence did/said the right thing for once. However, it is difficult to view him as a person with a functional conscience after turning a blind eye to or acting as a cheerleader for Trump’s misdeeds for 4 years.
The law and order party that has always said that “those taking the fifth must be guilty” sure are acting “guilty”.
I haven’t heard of a witness or potential defendant in a court case being allowed to refuse a subpoena because they think that the court is illegal.
What are they afraid of. Hillary went through 6 congressional hearings and 11 hours straight “UNDER OATH” of relentless grilling by the likes of Chaffetz, Issa and Gowdy nothing criminal was ever found or any even successfully fabricated. Then they angrily grilled Comey the FBI director for not charging her ? So why wont these GOP Congressman come forward and testify? Could it be a guilty conscious.
Why would any voter support a candidate that supports the idea to overthrow a democracy?
Ray W. says
Trump initially and then commonly incited his followers to chant “Lock her up!” during 2016 and later political rallies, referring to HRC; it became a mantra that exists today in the minds of the many so-called conservative FlaglerLive commenters who continue to proclaim the need to lock her up, to the extent that it has become a first principal, so deeply ingrained in their thoughts that they no longer even have to think about what they are writing or yelling, depending on their situation.
Churchill addressed the necessity of locking up political leaders who supported Hitler during times of war in a letter to his Home Secretary dated November 21, 1943. In the context of the time, the Allies had not yet invaded Normandy. It was still believed by many Allied leaders that the Axis Powers then possessed a steadily eroding capacity to win the war. Please remember that General Eisenhower wrote two press releases for D-Day, depending on the outcome. One expressed his acceptance of all blame for the failure of the landings. Nonetheless, Churchill focused on the years-long detention of Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife; they had been detained at the outbreak of war with Germany. Sir Oswald, a member of Parliament, had founded the British fascist party (British Union of Fascists) in the early ’30’s. After Sir Oswald’s first wife died from surgical complications arising from treatment for appendicitis, he remarried in the presence of Mussolini and Hitler. An avowed fascist, Sir Oswald was deemed a threat to Great Britain shortly after it declared war on Germany; he was detained without ever being charged with a crime. Churchill learned the Sir Oswald faced serious health issues and turned his attention to the suspension of England’s unwritten writ of habeas corpus in that case.
Churchill wrote:
“I expect you will be questioned about the release of the Mosley’s. No doubt the pith of your case is health and humanity. You might however consider whether you should not unfold as a background the great principle of habeas corpus and the trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the State. The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian Governments, whether Nazi or Communist. It is only when extreme danger to the State can be pleaded that this power may be temporarily assumed by the Executive, and even so its working must be interpreted with the utmost vigilance by a Free Parlaiment. As the danger passes, persons so imprisoned, against whom there is no charge which courts and juries would accept, should be released, as you have steadily been doing, until hardly any are left. Extraordinary powers assumed by the Executive with the consent of Parliament in emergencies should be yielded up when and as the emergency declines. Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilisation.” (English spelling of civilization)
Churchill’s letter is remarkable for two reasons.
First, his leadership style commonly involved requests to his government ministers, not commands. This style of leadership accepts and encourages the qualities and strengths of his Cabinet ministers; he trusted them with the powers that had been delegated to them when they accepted membership into his administration. This was the style of prosecution that I experienced decades ago. Elected state attorneys and supervisors left line prosecutors alone. In my years as a Boyles prosecutor, he only called me once to ask about a case I was prosecuting. He started by asking me why another elected state attorney would approach him in Florida’s capital building about one of my misdemeanor cases involving a young HRS employee who had been accused of not returning a Blockbuster rental movie. The employee was the other state attorney’s niece. I replied that I knew the HRS employee, having worked with her on juvenile cases, and that I had called her to talk about her returning the video; she promised to do so and stated that she had recently moved. The movie was in a moving box. I told her that I would put a reminder on my calendar to call Blockbuster in two weeks. When I called Blockbuster, the store owner told me she had not returned to movie and that she had not contacted the store. I told Mr. Boyles that I then filed the charge. He replied: “Keep up the good work.”
Secondly, Churchill understood that liberalism, based on the rule of law, can only accept suspension of the rule of law in the most serious of situations, namely existential threat to the British homeland by Nazi Germany, but that a liberal government must always look to restore the rule of law as the existential threat eases. Those among the many FlaglerLive commenters who seek immediate prosecution and imprisonment of Trump or of the many insurrectionists who stormed our Capital building need to understand and accept that the adherence to the rule of law is one of the most important values inhering in our liberal democratic Constitutional republic. Prosecutors need to take all the time necessary to determine whether sufficient evidence to prosecute anyone either exists or does not exist. As a prosecutor, each time I affixed my signature to a charging document, I swore under oath in the presence of a notary that I believed that sufficient evidence existed to support every element of each offense charged, if that evidence were to be later accepted and believed to be true by a jury. Statutes of limitations exist to provide ample time for investigators and prosecutors to evaluate all of the evidence, inculpatory and exculpatory. There is no pressing need nor any pressing benefit to society for investigators or prosecutors to engage in a rush to judgment.
Jimbo99 says
So I go to pump gasoline this AM and the 87 Octane selector button indicates $ 3.569 [er gallon, also has FJB in Sharpie written by it. Liars are liars, none of them are celebrated beyond the one’s that gouged & made out. The rest of the masses are just excluded & victims.
Ray W. says
Jimbo99, last February the 13 OPEC member nations voted to cut their overall crude oil production levels. In July, OPEC voted to slowly restore crude oil production to previous levels. Since last February, crude oil prices have slowly and inexorably climbed from just over $40 per barrel to around $90 per barrel as crude oil reserves have been drawn down. Supply and demand in a worldwide free market economy.
You just have to accept the underlying premise that crude oil is an international commodity, not just a national commodity. When OPEC can control crude oil prices by voting to cut production, consumers all over the world pay more for gasoline and other petroleum distillates such as diesel fuel, kerosene, plastics, grease, etc. U.S. energy companies have not responded to the shortage by drilling for more oil. The New York Times reported that investors in American energy companies were pressuring the energy companies to forego drilling for more oil in order to reap the financial benefits of higher crude oil prices.
Do you, Jimbo99, agree that it is reasonable to argue that the ordinary American consumer like you and me is being squeezed both by OPEC’s production cuts and by greedy investors who are pressuring American energy companies to forego additional efforts to drill for more oil?
Something tells me you are blaming the Biden administration for decisions made by both the 13 OPEC nations (and 10 non-member nations that attend OPEC meetings in Vienna but do not have voting privileges) and by various American energy companies that want to pad their treasuries and their bottom lines. If that is so, how can you justify your attempt to link current local gasoline prices to the Biden administration? Something also tells me that you are just another of the millions of gullible Americans who refuse to grasp the fact that crude oil is an international commodity and that gasoline prices can be impacted by decisions made far from our shores. The thing is that you can and often do produce excellent well-reasoned comments and then veer off the rails with comments like this one. What does FJB scribbled on a gas pump have to do with the current price of gasoline?
As an aside, ExxonMobil’s largest gasoline refinery, located in Bayshore, Texas, experienced an explosion last December during maintenance operations to repair a leaking pipe. The official report is that a worker triggered a static electricity spark when he placed a wrench on a bolt to tighten a fitting. The spark ignited a fire that eventually culminated in an explosion that knocked out a significant portion of the refinery’s capacity. The refinery is the fourth largest in the country. It now operates at a reduced level. Repairs are expected to take a significant period of time to complete.
All of us remember the Texas freeze last February that shut down almost 30% of America’s gasoline refinery capacity overnight when the state’s electricity grid failed. Gasoline prices almost immediately shot up all over the nation. That event can properly be blamed on deregulation of that state’s electrical grid, because Texas regulators refused to require Texas electrical energy companies to winterize their plants, even though they knew of the risk from a similar event 10 years earlier. Governor Abbott promised Texans that it wouldn’t happen again because the grid had been fixed, but when a severe cold weather system approached Texas a few weeks ago he warned Texans that the grid might fail again. Is this the type of lying the article’s author is writing about?
At least FP&L has responded to the perception of risk by looking into proactively winterizing its electrical generating plants.
Ray W. says
I looked up a recent Bloomberg article pertaining to plans by American energy companies to drill for crude oil. On February 18th, the article quoted Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield: “Whether its $150 oil, $200 oil, or $100 oil, we’re not going to change our growth plans.” Pioneer intends to limit its drilling growth to 5% this year.
While many other American energy companies intend to drill more aggressively, the article focused on a significant number of other American energy companies that also plan to limit their growth plans, regardless of how high crude oil prices go. It seems that a number of energy companies intend to profit from the rise in prices caused by OPEC’s cutbacks. After all, they are already pumping a lot of oil from already developed fields. If a company is already pumping 500,000 barrels of oil per day, the profit potential to be earned at $45 per barrel is obviously far less than what the company can make selling the same amount of oil at $90 per barrel. If too many companies drill for more oil, then the price per barrel will eventually drop. Sell less, make more! New oil company mantra.
One day, perhaps someday soon, the gullible, like Jimbo99, will realize that presidents don’t control oil companies. Blame the oil producers right here at home, Jimbo99. Maybe someday, Jimbo99 will comment on seeing “FP” scribbled on a gas pump. It would be more accurate, though maybe less emotionally satisfying, to the gullible among us.
Fredrick says
Waiting breathlessly for the article entitled “When the media lies and why” and you use the Russia collusion BS that the media endlessly tried to spin and the facts that it continues to ignore as the subject. There are no journalists left. Only talking political heads promoting their agenda.
Steve says
You are talking about Fox Networks right?
Ray W. says
I am reminded of a very old story recounted to me by my father before I entered law school. He stated that I needed to understand the nature of journalism. He explained that in 1969 a prominent Orlando attorney suspected of ties to the mob had been arrested on charges involving allegations of sexual activity with a 15-year-old young woman who had run away from her West Virginia home. Every Friday afternoon, detectives would release additional details to reporters so that those details would frame the lead story in the Friday evening local TV newscasts and then the front page, above the fold, articles in the Sunday print editions.
As today’s discovery rules did not exist in 1969, my father filed a motion seeking an in-camera inspection by the judge of the prosecutor’s files to determine if any exculpatory evidence existed in the files. When my father arrived at his client’s law office well before the time of the hearing, the receptionist guided him to the lawyer’s library, as the reception area was filled with clients.
Eventually, the attorney met with my father in the library. My father asked him how he could continue to practice law and appear before judges, as he had been charged with one of the worst crimes that could befall a man of his stature. The attorney replied that he looked at his situation as if he were in the eye of a hurricane. He explained that the winds swirled all around him, and that he felt the swirling winds, but that he did not know how far down the block the winds blew. He told himself three things:
He said his friends would remain his friends, no matter the charges against him, so that wouldn’t change.
He said his enemies would remain his enemies and the charges would only add to what they were already saying about him, so that wouldn’t change either.
He said he knew he was public enemy number one, but only for a time. Thirty days from then there would be a new public enemy number one and people would forget about him. A year after that, after the charges had been dropped, people would need a lawyer and when they looked in the yellow pages they would recognize his name, but not remember why they knew of it. They would think to themselves that they had heard of him and that he must be a good lawyer. He stated he knew he would make money from his pending charges.
But he added a comment. He stated that those damned detectives were walking around telling reporters that the girl said he couldn’t get it up. “Damn it, that hurts! That really hurts!”
During the hearing, the trial judge ordered the prosecutor to deliver to the court the case files for the in-camera review. That Saturday morning, my father received a phone call from the trial judge, telling him to immediately drive to the judge’s Orlando home. My father drove over and was given an affidavit from the prosecutor’s file. During the State Attorney Investigation with the young woman, which involves a sworn statement from a witness, the alleged victim had told the prosecutor under oath that the attorney had never touched her or even attempted any sexual act with her. When my father returned home, he called the prosecutor’s home and berated him for failing to turn over the child’s exculpatory sworn statement, calling him a “dirty son-of-a-bitch.” (In 1968, before he resigned his office, my father had been the president of the statewide prosecutor’s association and had every elected prosecutor’s home number.)
My father sought and received permission from the judge to take the alleged victim’s deposition in West Virginia. He flew with his investigator to West Virginia and asked the young woman one question: Who did you talk to about your case when you returned home? She answered with a list of named friends. My father sought out each potential witness and asked what they had learned. Each said that their friend had told them that nothing had happened. The charges were soon dropped by the prosecutor.
Fredrick continues to operate under the belief that whatever he claims automatically makes sense. He is correct that reporters ignore many subjects, but he is wrong in asserting that ignoring certain subjects makes reporting malicious in some way. What really happens is that stories lose traction over time; they all do, some faster than others, without any malice inhering in the ensuing absence. And there is seldom any need to resurrect old stories because new stories rise and fall on their own. There will always be a new public enemy number one and people will forget about old public enemies. Clients and their family members commonly talked to me of the mortification they felt when their picture or the picture of a loved one was posted on the front page of the News-Journal. My most common reply was to ask them if they had ever recognized a person who was pictured on the front page of the paper while stopped beside another car at a red light on the day of the story?
There are lots of journalists out there. Many are exceptional journalists. The fact that Fredrick doesn’t recognize them for what they are in no way impacts that status, except in Fredrick’s mind. Now, the fact that Fredrick’s mind is a repository of malice is another story altogether. As an old-time prosecutor once told me: Always consider the source before relying on it.
Michael Cocchiola says
Trump lies because he is an ignorant, lying, scamming, thieving, racist, bigoted, amoral, unethical, sociopathic pig. And his loyal followers can pick any or all of these for themselves.
There… I said it out loud.
Ray W. says
Interesting that you link Trump with his followers, perhaps inextricably so. William Ewert Gladstone, one of the founding fathers of the British Liberal Party commented on the inextricable link between orator and follower:
“The work of the orator from its very inception is inextricably mixed up with practice. It is cast in the mold offered to him by the minds of his hearers. It is an influence principally received from his audience (so to speak) in vapor, which he pours back upon them in a flood. The sympathy and concurrence of his time is, with his own mind, joint parent of the work. He cannot follow nor frame ideals; his choice is to be what the age will have him, what it requires in order to be moved by him; or else not be moved at all.”
Trump’s followers created the mold that created Trump. His followers pour out their desire for insurrection and he pours it back in a flood. We live in a rising tide of political violence that is likely to last for a long time. Today’s events are moved by Trump together with his audience; “… or else not be moved at all.”
Sherry says
@Ray W. . . you are too kind to give Frederick and others so much credit for any kind of intellectual analysis. Alas, not everyone has your education/experience/capacity for seeing the overlapping geopolitical ramifications of critical subjects explored on Flaglerlive.
Much of what I experience from the “usual suspects” here are merely unadulterated “right winged” conspiratorial, lies and talking points directly from the talking heads at FOX.