Lies and liars come in all shapes, in all shades of white, grey and black. What distinguishes the more extreme forms of lying is the degree of harm they cause and the extent to which the behavior becomes habitual or uncontrollable.
President LBJ was done-in by his “credibility gap,” the growing abyss between what he said happened and what actually happened in Vietnam. Nixon had his “modified limited hangout” and “inoperative” euphemisms to mask lies about Watergate and after a while few believed Reagan’s disavowals of trading arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Clinton’s infamous assertion that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” was followed by proof in the form of a blue dress from Monica Lewinsky. Bush warned about the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and never quite recovered his credibility when they were not found.
Obama’s distortions and lack of credibility have matched and now trumped those of his predecessors. Americans expect presidential mendacity to be sporadic rather than serial.
Americans generally have short memories and may well have forgotten Obama’s promises to close Guantanamo, or his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, or his promise to stop the revolving door of lobbyists coming in and out of the executive office or his promise to make his the most transparent presidency. We may have even forgiven him when the stimulus bill didn’t produce those “shovel ready” jobs and the majority of the stimulus ended up in the hands of bankers, businesses and Obama donors; or we may have just smiled and winked when he boasts about the vast increases in oil and gas production that actually came in spite of him rather than due to his efforts.
But the lies, distortions and broken promise have become so frequent that many at home and abroad are turning on him. Almost nothing promised about ObamaCare proved true. Despite Obama’s numerous promises, you didn’t get to keep your doctor or your health insurance nor did you end up with lower premiums and deductibles. Businesses are cutting hours and refusing to hire, hospitals are closing, billions were wasted on a federal healthcare website that only works occasionally at best and a CBO study says more jobs will be lost and more insurance policies will be cancelled before 2015.
In order to offset deception, the economy must be robust and that ain’t happening. Obama has presided over 5 years of continued economic disaster. If real unemployment were down to 5%, the gross national product growing at 4% and the budget nearly balanced, we might have a tendency to forget about the Benghazi cover-up; fast and furious; eavesdropping on AP reporters; politicization of the IRS and its vast overpayments in income credits to illegal aliens and stall tactics on conservative tax exemptions; the EPA’s underhanded war on anything fossil fuel; NSA disclosures, the “Arab Spring” mess, the Syrian mess, ad nauseum.
In this administration where lies and deceptions are the norm, can anyone really trust that if immigration reform is passed that Obama won’t suspend “settled law” on border enforcement as he did with the ObamaCare employer mandate? If Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius assures us yet again that ObamaCare is suffering from a “mere glitch,” would you believe her?
And for that matter, will a Saudi ambassador or an Israeli diplomat now trust Obama when he swears that Syria’s continued oppression of dissidents will cross a red line, or that another newly discovered secret Iranian nuclear facility is a game-changer?
Will German Chancellor Angela Merkel listen to Obama when he insists that NSA did not monitor her phone? Would the American public trust his administration if they stated on television that the next attack on a U.S. embassy was due to anger over a video or that Guantanamo would be closed in 2014?
I would label Obama as a pathological liars because they are generally self-centered, manipulative and controlling and have a total disregard for the effect their lies have on others.
Lawrence Seller at TheAmericanThinker.com disagrees. He believes that Obama is an Ideological liar because of his devotion to the Machiavellian dictum of “the ends justify the means.”
Obama believes it is acceptable to use bad or immoral methods as long as you accomplish something “good” by using them. In other words, in order to achieve what you consider as an important aim, it is acceptable to do something bad. Morally “right” consequences often necessitate morally wrong actions and what is considered “right” or “wrong” is determined by the outcome. He does not necessarily believe what he is saying, but by saying it, he confirms the purity of his intentions through advancing his statist goals and revolutionary dreams.
Pathological or Ideological – Stated simply, Obama lies because the true objectives of his fundamental transformation of the United States are incompatible with American democracy and tradition.
Source: The Wages of Presidential Deception by Victor Davis Hanson
