The Ultimate, World-Class Liar Among Presidential Candidates

Common Sense Commentary: The more that is revealed about Hillary Clinton, the more votes her opponent, Bernie Sanders gets. The problem Bernie and the Democrats have is that Bernie is an avowed, self described Socialist and is even worse than Hillary. Until the delegate votes are counted and the Democrats have picked their Candidate, Americans have to worry that one of these two, or Biden, might wind up President. In the mean time, Hillary wins the Liar's championship.
At least Bernie tells the truth when he admits he is a Socialist, but then, so did the Nazis (National Socialist Party) and Joseph Stalin's USSR (United Soviet Socialist Republic). RB

In a world that prized truth, she couldn’t be dog-catcher. In our world, she could be president.

The Clintons’ political legacy of dishonesty

By Michael Goodwin

New York Post

January 30, 2016 | 10:03pm

When Donald Trump, Ben Carson and other political outsiders first denounced political correctness, they instantly struck a nerve. They were promising to peel back the mushy language that government and so-called sophisticates use to conceal simple truths.

I was hardly alone in liking the vow of honesty, and as Trump and Carson rose in the early polls, their rivals, the media and voters got into the act. Denouncing political correctness quickly became routine and is now the leading ­cliché of the campaign.

Alas, that makes it part of the problem it was meant to solve.

Look at it this way: Accusing someone of being politically correct is the politically correct way of saying they are lying. Let’s cut to the chase and just say it, for God’s sake!

That urge came over me as I watched Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, along with Jeb Bush, ­argue over each other’s immigration flip-flops during last week’s GOP debate. Because Fox moderators used videos to demonstrate the differences between where the candidates once stood and where they stand, the truth was obvious, yet none of the three ­rivals dared say it.

Why couldn’t even one acknowledge that he changed his position and explain why? And if none would, why didn’t the others just say, “You’re lying”?

These are three men I admire, yet each lacked the courage to be honest on a crucial point during a televised job interview. When did the truth become so toxic and ­untruths so acceptable?

Spin and puffery have a long history in politics, but something has snapped in our culture that we no longer even expect our leaders to talk straight. We have become immune to lies and the ­liars who tell them.

I blame it on the Clintons. Their survival despite a quarter-century of shameful dishonesty has lead the way in lowering the bar for ­integrity in public life.

One result is the disgust that most Americans have for government. Another is that many voters are willing to overlook other deficiencies in anyone they believe is honest, such as Trump and Bernie Sanders. Americans desperate for the truth will sacrifice traditional litmus tests to get it.

We would have better politics and be a better country if we had stopped the Clintons years ago. It was obvious before his election that Bill Clinton was a stranger to truth, and it soon became obvious that Hillary was no better. Recall the sensation in 1996 when the late William Safire used his New York Times column to speak in shockingly plain terms about ­Hillary.

“Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad ­realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar,” he began, 20 years ago this month.

“Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.”

Safire took a lot of heat, with critics disputing not so much his conclusion about a raft of incidents but the bare-knuckled way he expressed it. Bill Clinton’s press secretary supplied obligatory chivalry by saying, “The president, if he were not the president, would have delivered a more forceful response on the bridge of Mr. Safire’s nose.”

Safire used a later column to defend his language with a dissection of both “congenital” and “liar.” He cited Winston Churchill, who had once chided a colleague for “terminological inexactitude,” before quoting Churchill’s advice that “short words are best, and the old words when short are best of all.”

And so they are, yet our pretensions keep getting in the way. A downside of the upscaling of modern life is a fondness for false sensitivity and verbal cotton candy. Nobody “watches” anything anymore, they “monitor” it. No action is taken until all “stakeholders” are consulted. We say “price point” when we mean “price.” And is there no other way to express sympathy besides pledging “thoughts and prayers”?

This lament is not about semantics. It is about the urgent need for plain honesty in American life. Being politically correct is not being kind. It is being dishonest and we are reaping the consequences.

Consider that the passage of time has confirmed Safire’s conclusion about Hillary Clinton. She was a liar then, and remains one today.

In a world that prized truth, she couldn’t be dog-catcher. In our world, she could be president.