White House Lies: A History

In October of 1962, upon being caught in a direct and unambiguous lie -- that the Pentagon knew of no offensive weapons in Cuba, when in fact Defense Department officials were debating whether to invade the island in order to remove those very weapons -- Arthur Sylvester, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, made the audacious claim, "It’s inherent in government’s right, if necessary, to lie to save itself." snip

Alterman concludes the book with a chapter on George W. Bush and the "post-truth presidency," an apt assessment of where we have come to. Seeing as Alterman began the book many years ago as a graduate dissertation, it is not too surprising that Bush’s presidency provides only a brief coda. But Bush’s relationship to the truth and its consequences for our politics are worthy of lengthier contemplation.

Two things distinguish Bush from his predecessors on the subject of lying. First, Bush’s grandest lies have not been about covering up what has already happened but about persuading the public to go along with what he has decided to do but has yet to implement. Tax cuts, Iraq, now Social Security -- each major policy move has been accompanied by a campaign of deception. Lying is not a defensive reaction to a crisis but a carefully crafted strategy. Second, and perhaps most troubling, is that Bush seems unconcerned about getting caught. Indeed, the administration’s damn-the-torpedoes fearlessness is the source of much of its political success. That it would actually hire, along with a series of other Iran-Contra figures, a perjurer like Elliot Abrams -- who has recently been promoted to deputy national-security adviser in charge of democracy promotion, of all things -- is testimony to its utter audacity. Go ahead, these officials seem to be saying, call us a bunch of liars -- we really don’t care.

One of the common threads running through this history is that in case after case, the press went along with whatever the administration told it. Watergate may have temporarily cured reporters of this credulousness, but the remission lasted only so long. When the history of the Bush administration is written, the abject cowardice of the press in confronting an administration that held it in undisguised contempt and lied in its face will be one of the most depressing chapters. As citizens, we have no defense from official deception but the reporters who are tasked with discovering the truth and holding presidents to account on our behalf. As Alterman writes, if public officials "feel free to lie to the press -- and, by extension, the nation -- with impunity, then democracy becomes pseudo-democracy, as the illusion of accountability replaces the real thing." Even when they have mustered the courage to point out fabrications in a story buried on page A19, the media’s mighty arrows of truth telling have bounced off this White House like a child’s toy with defective suction cups.

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