Voters' Guide: How to Tell If a Politician Is Lying

By WALTER SHAPIRO

Never has there been a politician so candid about his own mendacity as Earl Long, the fabled drinking, carousing and hog-hunting 1950s Governor of Louisiana (hint: Paul Newman played him in Blaze). After one election, Long went back on a campaign promise in a big way. When a delegation of betrayed supporters showed up in Baton Rouge to protest, the Governor refused to see them. "What will I tell them?" asked a desperate aide. Long's immortal response: "Tell them I lied!"

In a similar fix, Long's modern-day counterparts would convene focus groups to test various excuses. (The likely winner: "When I made that campaign promise, I had a serious substance-abuse problem, but now I'm leading my class at a nationally ranked recovery clinic.") Then a top speechwriter would embellish the confession, and a media consultant would orchestrate the requisite appearance on Geraldo. But all this high-priced talent could not alter reality -- a broken campaign promise is still a breach of trust. Lies are still lies. The trick is knowing how to recognize them.

All candidates lie -- in a technical sense -- every time they read a speech they paid someone else to write, every time they gush over how thrilled they are to be among the real people outside the Beltway, and every time they feign modesty after a particularly effusive introduction. But the voters have become inured to such petty fabrications. The big fibs are the problem -- the read- my-lips whoppers. So here, as a public service, are some rhetorical tricks ; that signal DANGER -- SHARP CURVES AHEAD.

Suspicious Stats. Maybe it's related to declining math scores, but these days the favored ploy is to taint by numbers. If a politician rattles off more than three statistics about his opponent's record, assume that at least one of those figures is a flat-out falsehood, yanked completely out of context and massaged by friendly computers. The more precise the number, the higher the likelihood of prevarication. Senator Joe McCarthy would never have set off the 1950s witch-hunts if he had merely claimed, "There are, I don't know, maybe 100, maybe 200 communists in the State Department."

Dubious Denials. Cornered by the press, the scandal-scarred politician finally deigns to answer the charges against him. Listen to his language carefully, especially for signs of the overly specific denial. "On my word of honor, I never accepted cash or other favors in office" is not a blanket refutation of bribery. Maybe he was handed the money in a hotel room or while he was still a candidate. Denying a "five-year affair" is different from claiming a lifetime of marital fidelity. An advanced gambit is angrily rebutting a charge that was never made. When Richard Nixon claimed in the midst of Watergate, "I am not a crook," he was telling a literal truth. He was charged with the abuse of power -- not larceny.

The Tricky Two-Step. Complex sentences are a duplicitous politician's delight. Suppose a candidate plans to oppose kumquat subsidies. Saying so outright to a group of farmers would reap no votes -- just permanent enmity. Instead, the aspirant might try to finesse it like this: "No one in the Senate is more keenly aware of the courage and the grit of kumquat growers than myself, but we should never lose sight of how the federal deficit is robbing our children." It is an example of that classic two-step -- a sonorous lie followed by a fleeting glimpse of unpleasant reality. For if Diogenes were parsing a political speech in his quest for an honest man, he would strip away all the dependent clauses; the truth is usually found in simple declarative sentences.

The Candor Pander. Never trust anyone who begins a sentence, "My dear friends, let me speak frankly to you . . ." Veracity these days is rare enough that its presence need not be advertised with self-congratulatory words like "candor" and "honesty." For while the truth may still set you free, it remains a treacherous path for those who would rather be elected than liberated. .