Just Don't Lie

Official dishonesty--like Team Biden's--is a sin against self-government

In this column:

• Hiding President Biden’s cognitive decline

• The importance of information in a democracy

• Official lies are the theft of popular sovereignty

• Wilson, FDR, Nixon, Clinton, Reid, Trump…

By this point, just about everyone has weighed in on President Biden’s cognitive decline and his administration’s carefully orchestrated, years-long dishonesty about it. I agree with most of the criticism: Yes, it jeopardized American security, tangled necessary chains of command, duped a negligently credulous press corps, and ultimately contributed to his vice president’s rout.

But there’s another matter that hasn’t been discussed enough: It subverts self-government when state officials’ lies are designed to prevent the people from making informed decisions about the most important issues.

This methodical dishonesty was so disgraceful that some members of the Biden inner circle should, in my view, be informally disqualified from holding positions of public authority again. America’s experiment in self-government demands better.

Information and Self-Government

Information plays a different role in democratic republics than in, say, hereditary monarchies or statist regimes. In places where the people are merely subjects instead of citizens, rulers make decisions however they want. It doesn’t matter so much whether the people know the unemployment rate, student-achievement scores, or the national debt. Rulers are gonna rule.

But in America and other places where the people are in charge, information has to be available and reliable. If we’re to make smart choices about whom to elect, which party to support, and which policies to advocate, we have to be informed.

This puts a professional obligation on journalists. America has legal protections for the press because the people need a media that collects and distributes reliable information.

But the importance of information in self-governing nations puts a moral obligation on those in power. If officials deceive (e.g. hide information, provide false information), those officials could manipulate public sentiment to stay in power and do terrible things. Obviously, all Americans have First Amendment rights, so we can’t pass sweeping laws that punish officials for all lies. But we must have a strong informal, national agreement—call it a tradition associated with republican virtue—that officials’ dishonesty is shameful and anti-democratic.

The Theft of Sovereignty

Two major explanations have been offered for the serial dishonesty of President Biden’s coterie. One is personal/professional self-interest: These folks loved being in power, and if they had been honest about the president’s diminished capacity, the president would have been replaced, and they would have lost their power and prestige.

I suspect this is a partial explanation for a few unusually selfish officials’ behavior. But I don’t think it’s the primary answer.

I think most of these folks believed 1) that it would be dangerous to allow Donald Trump back into the White House, 2) that Joe Biden was the only person able to beat him, so 3) everything had to be done to enable Biden to face Trump—and that “everything” included misleading voters about President Biden’s health.

Even if you agree with 1) and 2), 3) is still unacceptable.

We simply can’t allow that kind of reasoning in a democratic republic. Officials who behave like that are stealing their fellow citizens’ right to make reasoned, informed choices of their own—that is, their right to self-govern. These officials are deciding that their own conception of the public good and the national interest is so superior to the views of others that the officials are entitled to deceive their fellow citizens. No.

Officials are allowed to make a strong case for their cause and against the opponent, but they can’t lie to purposely gives other citizens a false picture and therefore a false choice.

Electing a president is the most important action Americans take, collectively, as citizens. It’s our way of being in charge of our national future. It’s the way we exercise individual—as well as group—political agency. We cannot allow self-righteous officials to use deception to steal that power.

Policing Officials Who Deceive

This is not the first instance of deception at the highest levels designed to manipulate an American election. Those around President Woodrow Wilson hid his incapacity in 1919-20 after a major stroke. Those around President Franklin Roosevelt hid his severely limited capacity at the end of his time in office (1944-45). President Nixon and his team lied about their dirty tricks related to the 1972 election. Sen. Harry Reid lied about Mitt Romney before the 2012 election. Donald Trump lied about the outcome of the 2020 election as a way of staying in power. These aren’t simply instances of partisanship gone wild. They are anti-democratic assaults on American governing.

I have no opinion on whether Biden’s team broke the law. But I believe that what they did was shameful. And we shouldn’t hesitate to say that.

Formal rules can only do so much in a free society. We also need codes of conduct, a shared sense of duty and virtue, to make self-government work. We shouldn’t rely on courts alone to police unethical behavior. We need to set expectations and hold one another accountable.

I know that humans are not angels. We must anticipate that some officials will act badly. But we also need good people to speak up when they see immoral official acts. We need good people to resign when their colleagues and bosses cross the line. It is striking and sad that so many staff members went along with the deception about President Wilson’s, FDR’s, and Biden’s health. It is striking and sad that there were so few resignations when Presidents Nixon, Clinton, and Trump broke the public trust.

Public authority comes with moral obligations. Officials should recognize that. America should hold them responsible when they don’t. Those who use official powers to deceive the American people should not have official power ever again.