When voters insist on lies, politicians follow their incentives and lie

By David McElroy · August 25, 2011

Last fall, Rick Perry published a book called “Fed Up!” in which he called Social Security “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal.” He was telling the truth then, but he’s running from the truth now — because he wants to be elected president.

In the book, Perry asserted that Social Security is unconstitutional, and he said the program was an affront to respect for the Constitution and limited government. He compared it to a “bad disease” that’s continued to spread. Perry said that individuals should be allowed to own and control their own retirement plans, so they could have “a retirement system that is no longer set up like an illegal Ponzi scheme.”

Every word he said there was accurate, but he’s now running from that truth. According to the Wall Street Journal, his campaign claims that the views in last year’s book — published less than a year ago — don’t reflect Perry’s current views:

“His communications director, Ray Sullivan, said Thursday that he had ‘never heard’ the governor suggest the program was unconstitutional. Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but ‘Fed Up!’ is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program.”

It’s amazing how quickly a politician’s views can change when he knows telling the truth will lose him votes. Notice the weasel words in the statement, though. The campaign press flack doesn’t quite say that Perry was wrong then. He just said that the book doesn’t represent Perry’s views on “how to fix the program.” If Social Security is an unconstitutional disease, how exactly do you fix it?

It’s easy to take shots at politicians for flip-flops such as this — and I’m happy to do it — but there’s a more important lesson here. Rick Perry told the truth in what he said in the book last fall. (Whether he wrote it or just approved a ghostwriter’s words doesn’t matter.) Why would he go public with such an inflammatory truth then and pull back from it now?

The answer is simple. Voters insist on being lied to. If you believe that Social Security isn’t ultimately dead, you might also believe that Elvis Presley is still alive and hanging out at a nearby 7-11, but voters don’t want to hear that. They don’t want to hear any difficult truths, because lies are sweeter and make them feel better. Truth makes them confront harsh realities and make hard choices. Voters are intellectually lazy and morally “flexible,” because they reward whatever candidate promises them the most — and promises to make other people pay for it.

I’m no fan of Rick Perry, but this ultimately isn’t about him. This is about voters who insist on being lied to and it’s about a system that requires politicians to lie in order to win. If you believe you can win the game without lying — or at least avoiding hard truths — you haven’t been paying attention.

Ultimately, the problem is the system, not the politicians.

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It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

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