Lies and politics in US campaigns

Who’s being called the bigger liar, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton? Which of their reputed lies are more likely to keep the candidate out of the White House?

Clinton’s alleged falsehood involves her private email server while she was secretary of state: why she established it, how forthcoming she was with State Department officials, what it may have concealed.
Trump is charged with lies almost too numerous to catalogue.

The United States is beset by serious problems, ranging from persistent inequality at home and Islamist radicalism abroad to the seemingly intractable quicksand in Washington.

But so far the 2016 presidential campaign has been largely preoccupied with the question of which candidate has the worst character.

How do voters tell which of the candidates’ statements are lies and which are just garden-variety spin? Then, how do voters tell how important a reputed lie is?

The issue of lying was dragged most explicitly into the foreground during the presidential campaign of 1884, when Republican James G. Blaine ran against Democrat Grover Cleveland.

Democrats tried hard to make Blaine’s alleged mendacity a central issue, claiming that he had not only engaged in corruption but, worse, lied about it. The corruption charge first arose in 1872, when Blaine, then House speaker, was accused of taking bribes to ignore fraudulent railroad contracts.

His opponents, though, were unable to produce proof.

In 1876, new corruption rumours emerged. This time, the story was that the Union Pacific Railroad had bribed Blaine by paying him $64,000 for worthless railway bonds. House Democrats forced an investigation. The testimony seemed to favour Blaine - until one clerk said he had helped arrange the transaction, and had letters to prove it.

Some of the correspondence ended, “Kindly burn this letter.” Blaine survived that investigation. But in the 1884 presidential campaign, Democrats revived the charges. By this time, additional incriminating correspondence had surfaced. Blaine had to admit it was real.

He insisted it did not prove he had lied. But Democrats began to chant, “Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine!” They also had another, briefer version: “Burn this letter! Burn this letter!”

That was about as central as a charge of lying can get in a presidential campaign. It certainly didn’t do Blaine any good. Even so, Cleveland’s victory probably turned less on what was proved about Blaine’s lies than on the three-way split in the Republican Party and on a speech by a Blaine ally, who insulted swing-state Irish voters by calling Democrats the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.”

Clinton’s critics offer a litany of reasons going back almost three decades: her secretive healthcare policy task force, the Rose law firm records, the damage control that extricated her husband from a cascade of sexual accusations.

So, as the investigations of her private email server have ratcheted up, critics keep saying that the other shoe may finally drop. (They have been talking about this for years.)

She has lost the benefit of the doubt, they insist - partly because of her own behaviour and partly because of circumstance. Trump’s problem is far different.

His speech is littered with lies - like shards of glass strewn all over the highway after a monumental auto accident. Yet all the fact-checking by all the news organisations hasn’t yet produced even a shudder on the dial of public opinion. It must be admitted that some of the fact-checking is infected by the checkers’ impotent hatred of Trump.

Does Trump’s claim that there’s “nothing to learn” from his tax returns merit four Pinocchio’s? Who knows, until the returns are released? When Trump says the official unemployment numbers are “phony” because “if you stop looking for a job you’re essentially considered employed,” does the statement really belong on Politico’s “lies” list? (True, you’re not called “employed;” but you’re certainly not counted in the unemployment rate.)

Still, the unambiguous untruths seem plentiful enough. So, what’s the reason for the absence of traction? The reason is that the people the fact-checkers want to persuade are supporting Trump precisely because they see him as rich and powerful enough to stick it to the fact-checkers on their behalf.

Clinton has not been caught in any consequential lie and her opponents won’t likely be able to make it into a major campaign issue without an indictment.

It will be this, not her reputed lies, that could hurt her.
In the same way, if Trump’s opponents want to snuff out the power based on his purported lies, they can’t do it by contradicting what he says.

Instead, they will have to show his followers that, like the wizard of Oz, he is not really so great and powerful. It will be this revelation of weakness, not any proven lies that will likely trigger a meltdown.

If either of these candidates is done in, it won’t be because of what they said - but because of more profound vulnerabilities.