Why Leaders Lie Read Online Free PDF Page B

lying about matters relating to foreign policy might have a blowback effect on everyday life inside a country’s borders. In other words, lying about international politics in a visible way—even if it makes good strategic sense—might spill into the national arena and cause significant trouble by legitimizing and encouraging dishonesty in daily life. Too much concealment and spinning can also have unfortunate consequences, but those kinds of deception are not nearly as dangerous as rampant lying.
    Routine lying has at least four dangerous consequences for life on the home front, all of which are especially serious for democracies. Widespread lying makes it difficult for citizens in a democracy to make informed choices when they vote on issues and candidates, simply because there is a good chance that they are basing their decisions on false information. How can a voter hold a politician or leader accountable when it is impossible to know the truth about that person’s actions? Democracies operate best when they include a reasonably efficient marketplace of ideas, which can only work when citizens have reliable information and there are high levels of transparency and honesty.
    Lying by government officials—to each other or the public—can also cripple a state’s policy-making process, whether it is a democracy or not. 2 The main reason is that the transaction costs in a world of deceit are enormous, because policymakers cannot trust each other, and thus they have to devote extra time and resources to making sure that the information they have at their disposal is accurate. But even when they perform due diligence, they still might not get all of their facts correct, in which case their decisions will be based on false information, which would greatly increase the chances of pursuing wrongheaded policies.
    Furthermore, promiscuous lying can undermine the rule of law, which is at the heart of democratic life. Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who indicted White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby in October 2006 for lying about his role in revealing the identity of a CIA aide, put the point well when he said: “The truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.” 3 Of course, laws exist in part to punish lying, which means that some modicum of dishonesty is expected in any society. But lying cannot be widespread; there has to be a substantial amount of honesty and trust in public life for any legal system to work effectively. Consider, for example, that George Ryan, the former governor of Illinois, who initially favored capital punishment, felt that he had to suspend all executions in his state because there was convincing evidence that many of the inmates on death row were convicted on the basis of lies and other improprieties. 4
    Finally, if lying is pervasive in a democracy, it might alienate the public to the point where it loses faith in democratic government and is willing to countenance some form of authoritarian rule. After all, it is hard to see how a democracy can remain viable for long if the people have no respect for their leaders, because they think they are a bunch of liars,and no respect for their institutions, because they think that they are deeply corrupt. In short, too much lying can do serious damage to any body politic.
    Switching gears, how might international lying adversely affect a country’s foreign policy? As emphasized, leaders lie to each other and to their own people because they believe that doing so serves the national interest. And the sad fact is that lying sometimes does make good strategic sense. If it did not, there would be no good justification for the various kinds of lies described in the previous chapters. Nevertheless, lying occasionally backfires, in which case a country might end up worse off rather than better off for having told a particular lie. Hence, the key question for assessing the ramifications