Respectful Lying

versus dumb sociopathic lying

Doin’ the Mike psych

When Bill Clinton got caught parsing the meaning of the word “is” over the things he did with Monica Lewinsky, his advisors quietly conducted some private polling to see if he could get away with just confessing to the whole thing and putting it behind him. The answer, the Los Angeles Times would later report, was a hard no. The sex stuff was a maybe, but the obvious lying during a deposition wouldn’t pass:

So Clinton, aided by Press Secretary Mike McCurry, started slow-pivot-lie-truthing, in the now-famous Clinton maneuver that drags out a controversy to allow the transitional limp distraction-confession: That never happened, and anyway, the fact that it may have happened is old news so let’s move on. The news media noticed, and reporters filed a long series of stories about the stages of the pivot:

See also the New York Times story in which McCurry said that it was a mistake to say in an interview that perhaps a less-than-innocent explanation could eventually emerge. Shit, too early!

This is an old and familiar behavior that everyone does, and the Nixon White House similarly explored the use of the “modified limited hangout.” What lie can we tell that sort of gives us plausibility and lets us deal with more unpleasant facts coming out? How do we shift our lie over time to adjust?

There’s a kind of respect in that brand of careful strategic lying, a perception that the liar is lying to people who have minds. Clinton knew voters would be angry at him. He knew that he’d done something that would merit that anger and cause him political harm if he got caught, and so he looked to limit the damage by addressing the crisis with a false story that wouldn’t nakedly insult the intelligence of the people he was trying to convince. (Whether or not he succeeded is a debate for another moment.) There’s a degree of humanity in the reaction that goes, Oh shit, people are gonna be so mad, how can be bullshit our way through this?

Now, this week the President of the United States repeatedly called out to a dead person.

And then his press secretary did this:

The dead person was just, you know, she was really “on his mind.” Because he knew she was dead, is why he repeatedly asked where she was. “Where’s Jackie?” people frequently say about other people when they know those people are dead. Why, just this morning, while preparing breakfast, I asked my family, “Where’s William Howard Taft?” Because I knew, see?

People who lie this poorly don’t understand other people, and they don’t respect other people. It’s an act of contempt. They’re purely performers, emptied vessels with no “what can I get away with?” filter, because that filter requires some fairly basic level of humanity.

You have to like people to lie to them well. I mean, that’s what I hear.