Of course, people have been calling politicians liars ever since Plato after the sophists for “making the stronger argument appear weaker and the weaker argument appear stronger.”
To a large extent, it’s a purely partisan issue.
You might have thought that Ronald Reagan was one of the greatest, and also most genial, presidents since Lincoln.
But his apotheosis only came after he left office.
Candidate and President Reagan were universally excoriated by the left.
He was stupid, a war-monger, and of course, he lied his head off.
He ended the Cold War without a shot and presided over an economic revival that began the greatest accumulation of wealth in history, but forget about that.
It was a little different with Donald Trump.
It was only later on that panic set in and people began to accuse him in earnest of—well, of many things. Treason through fabricated dealings with Russia, for example, not to mention narcissism, bad character, and, of course, lying.
But there’s another dimension to the fantasy land inhabited by the 46th president of the United States that has not been given the recognition it deserves.
Many of Biden’s misstatements are simply incoherent mashups of words, verbal equivalents of a 100-car pile-up on an interstate highway.
It’s even worse when you can understand him.
People disparage Donald Trump as a narcissist.
But can anyone hold a candle to Joe Biden in that department?
Biden thinks that he finished at the top of his class in law school.
Just a few days ago, in his commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Biden outdid himself.
Neither bit is true. Nor is it true, as he went on to say, that he played Varsity Football for the University of Delaware.
Historians may look back on the Biden presidency and credit him with an innovation, at least in the context of America, in the practice of political misrepresentation.
Any politician can lie.
But the obbligato of self-aggrandizing fantasy is something new, though not, perhaps, encouraging.
“‘To hell with the handkerchief,’ said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.”
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