[WSJ] An aide to President Obama boasted to the New York Times about lying and manipulating the media to sell the administration’s Iran policy. Mr. Obama himself proselytized for his health-care plan by saying that, despite mandatory requirements that outlawed millions of individual health plans, you’d be able to keep your existing plan. Nor is there the slightest ambiguity now: His administration deliberately lied to the American people about the origins of the 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya.We could go on. Candidate Obama, in a formal address, explained that Detroit’s financial troubles were due to its large, gas-guzzling cars. This was ridiculous. Businesses fail because of products that don’t make money, not the ones that do. But smart pols know which fibs the media will applaud.
Lying is the other mother’s milk of politics. Political leaders are always making less-than-optimal decisions. They act within political constraints. They are often less concerned with the thing itself than how it might affect the next election or progress on some unrelated priority.