The Lying Game: Why “Pants on Fire” is the Normal Attire in DC

President Obama has lied to the American people about important issues ranging from Benghazi to the economy to Obamacare to taxes.

One would think that knowing every word you say publicly is going to be recorded and scrutinized would prevent a person from stretching the truth or telling outright, blatant lies.

Politicians tend to attempt to shift blame or make excuses for their lies by saying they “misspoke”, or their statements were taken out of context. They often claim their words were distorted or twisted by the media or by their opponent.

They – including our current president – continue to lie right to our faces. The old joke “How can you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving” is painfully accurate.

Politicians seem to think they are above telling the truth, but why?

In his article Six Reasons Why Politicians Believe They Can Lie, Dr. Jim Taylor provides some reasons why politicians believe they can lie and get away with it:

1) Many politicians are narcissists. Though research on politicians is limited, it isn’t difficult to see the connection. Narcissists are arrogant, self-important, see themselves as special, require excessive admiration, have a sense of entitlement, and are exploitative. This constellation of narcissistic attributes causes them to believe that they are right and, even if they are not, they’re too smart to be caught or suffer the consequences. In other words, they believe their own BS. Case in point: As John Edwards, the former senator and vice presidential nominee, noted, “[My experiences] fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe you can do whatever you want.”

2) Politicians know their followers will believe them, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

3) People don’t want to hear the truth. Truth, as the saying goes, hurts and no one wants to hear things that threaten their existence, their beliefs, or that will make them uncomfortable. It is decidedly better for politicians to tell people what makes them feel comfortable.

4) The Internet never forgets. One of the unintended consequences of the Internet is that information, true or not, lives on forever and it is likely to continue to be believed even in the face of contradictory evidence.

5) Cognitive biases. Daniel Kahneman and others have demonstrated that the human mind engages in many cognitive tricks to help people be more efficient, reduce confusion and anxiety, and keep life simple and coherent. Examples include the confirmation bias which involves the inclination to seek out information that supports our own preconceived notions; the Semmelweis reflex which is the predisposition to deny new information that challenges our established views; and the overconfidence effect which involves unwarranted confidence in one’s own knowledge, just to name a few.

6) If a lie is told enough times, people will assume it is true. It is not a stretch to understand why people would believe something if they hear it enough. People expect that lies will be disproved and fade away. So if the lies continue to be heard, people assume, then they must be true.

The bottom line? Politicians lie because they know they can, and they know it will ultimately benefit them (winning elections and satisfying special interests are two examples).

Here is a compilation of lies Obama has told the American people from 2007 until early 2013. Of course, there have been more since then, which can be found on Obama Lies and PolitiFact.com.

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” – George Orwell