chop me down before i kill again.

i just took down a recent work-blog entry, after receiving word that it was too political, which, near as i can tell, means it mentioned politics and how they exist, sometimes baldly. so i was hastened to remove the post, chop chop. well a'ight, then, here we are:

our noble leaders, the mendacity index, and you.

Posted by huntsmanic 

The Washington Monthly put together a panel and created a nifty thing called the Mendacity Index, wherein each of our last 4 US presidents has 6 prominent, proven mendacities listed, and then is given an overall score between 0 and 5.
George W. ekes out the mendacity win, surprising no one.

For the Billy Madisons among us, “mendacity” can mean 1) a lie, plain and simple, but also 2) the tendency to lie. It’s a distinction worth making, because all our presidents lie at some points or others. ALL OF THEM. And, by making an index of it, we can get a somewhat dispassionate sense for where our presidents have chosen to employ untruths: how all of them have elected to weave mendacities–huge lies intended to justify people who’ve been blown up, as well as small, strange, inventive lies that smack of pathology–into their jobs.

Further, because jobs are a primary concern of this blog, taking a look at the lies our presidents get away with (and near-invariably they do get away with them), we can get a comparative sense of how we each, in our own jobs, stack up. (I’m not saying we all lie; we’re an exceedingly honest people (except, as it happens, for our national leaders and the people who work for them.))

Depressing? Sure it is. So let’s lighten the load. Below you’ll find the Reagan-thru-GW presidents, along with

A) a choice example from their 6 lies as featured in the Mendacity Index (which you can find in its entirety here)

B) a video clip that exemplifies each of them at their gregarious, mendacious finest.

Ronald Reagan.

At a press conference, a bored President Reagan spontaneously reprises his old role as Bullwinkle. Somewhere, future-governor Palin winks her approval.

“Killer Trees. After opining in August 1980 that “trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” Reagan arrived at a campaign rally to find a tree decorated with this sign: ‘Chop me down before I kill again.’

George HW Bush.

Anna Kournikova says, “You’re a WAY better partner than saggy Bob Dole! Bump me, Bushie!”

“Drugs in Lafayette Park. Addressing the country about the war on drugs on September 5, 1989, Bush held a plastic bag of crack cocaine before the television camera and said it had been ’seized a few days ago in a park across the street from the White House.’ In order to obtain the prop, however, undercover DEA agents had lured a teenage drug dealer from southeast D.C. to Lafayette Park. The dealer’s initial response to the request was, ‘Where the [expletive] is the White House?’”

Bill Clinton.

Buddy! We’ve talked about this! There is a time and there is a place and this is NEITHER. Oh, Buddy.

“Remembering The Iowa Caucuses. At the start of the 1996 election season, Clinton commented, ‘Since I was a little boy, I’ve heard about the Iowa caucuses.’ There were no Iowa caucuses when Clinton was a boy. They began in 1972, while Clinton was a graduate student at Oxford University.”

George W. Bush.

Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious. (Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious.)

“‘Average’ Tax Cuts. Announcing his second big tax cut package in January 2003, Bush stated that ‘These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans. Ninety-two million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money.’ But because the package was tilted heavily towards the very wealthy, the average tax cut for households in the middle quintile of the income spectrum was only $217, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.”

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