Bad Lies

We increasingly debate whether our leaders are incompetent or lying. Unfortunately, we need not choose.

Consider that in March the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, answered questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee in the “least untruthful manner” he could muster (his words). In June, Congressperson Nancy Pelosi described abortion as “sacred ground” to a Catholic. And finally, the attributions of the IRS scandal to low-level employees in Cincinnati and of American deaths in Benghazi to a film shared a disturbingly similar flimsiness and lack of effort.

National Review’s Charles Cooke struggled with Clapper:

Either Clapper was lying — responding in what he described disastrously to Andrea Mitchell on Sunday as the “least untruthful manner” available — or he is so out of touch and incompetent that he genuinely has no idea what is going on around him. Neither is comforting.

With Pelosi, it is often more obvious that incompetence and dishonesty are not mutually exclusive. Everyone knows that the Catholic Church condemns abortion as a grave evil and that it advocates for the right to life “from conception to natural death.” It is the least ambiguously held position in the public square. Also well understood is that Catholicism comes in only one version. There is no Pelosi Catholicism; and Nancy’s attempt to style her death cult as Catholic was addressed head on by Jesus’ fair warning that

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Finally, the President’s mouthpiece, Jay Carney, claimed that low level Cincinnati operatives caused the IRS scandal and that a film provoked the Benghazi tragedy. Both deceptions unraveled in record time. Peggy Noonan chronicled the shifting IRS claims:

First, Ms. Lerner planted a question at a conference. Then she said the Cincinnati office did it-a narrative that was advanced by the president’s spokesman, Jay Carney. Then came the suggestion the IRS was too badly managed to pull off a sophisticated conspiracy. Then the charge that liberal groups were targeted too — “we did it against both ends of the political spectrum.” When the inspector general of the IRS said no, it was conservative groups that were targeted, he came under attack. Now the defense is that the White House wasn’t involved….