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 ou
may have heard William F. Buckley Jr. refer to "the old tu
quoque." This is the technique in debate of saying,
"You too,"
or, as Mr. Buckley has translated, "So's your old man."
It is seldom a winning tactic, but it is very often relied on, by
debaters of every stripe.
The current
cover of The New Republic features the bald words: "He's
Lying." There is a picture of President Bush, speaking to the
public, and lines indicating several articles, including "Why
the Tax Cut Isn't Fair" and "Why We Can't Afford It."
The magazine's point, or rather, contention, is that Bush is lying
about his economic package: not that he's wrong about it, not that
he's charting the wrong course for America, not even that he's dumb
(which is a step up for The New Republic), but that he's
lying.
Lying is an
extraordinarily harsh charge, or used to be, when it was made more
judiciously. I have a hunch about why certain Democrats feel the
urge to claim that George W. Bush is a liar. Bill Clinton, of course,
lied constantly. So did his wife, now a senator from New York. The
Clintons lied about matters large and small. They lied about the
draft — I mean, really lied, not in The New Republic sense
— they lied about Gennifer Flowers (or at least he did, and I suspect
that she did, too), they lied about the travel office, they lied
— certainly Mrs. Clinton seems guilty of doing so — about Whitewater,
they lied about Filegate ("Craig Livingstone? Never heard of
him. Where'd he come from?"), they lied about illegal fundraising,
they lied about "that woman," they lied about pardons,
they lied about what they had taken from the White House, and in
what manner, they lied, they lied, they lied. It came utterly naturally
to them, and they passed the tendency on to their subordinates,
too. You might say that this was a presidency befouled from beginning
to end by the lie.
I even believe
the worst (although who can prove it?): that Clinton lied about
Juanita Broaddrick (and that Ms. Broaddrick is not lying), and that
he lied about his purpose behind two or three bombings.
The point is,
it must be rather depressing to be a Democrat — no matter what kind
of Democrat — and see that the leader of your party, the president
of the United States, is repeatedly lying. It was surely depressing
for Republicans around the time of Watergate; Jimmy Carter, in fact,
won the White House by positioning himself as the anti-liar ("I
will never lie to you"), even against the unquestionably scrupulous
Gerald R. Ford.
Then, of course,
there was the perpetual embroidery of the Gore campaign. As a Bush
spokesman in Austin (alongside whom I worked) liked to say, "The
vice president has a weakness for exaggeration."
So the temptation
must be great indeed to say, "George W. Bush is lying! See?
Our guy lied, your guy is lying, they all lie. All God's chillen
got lies. Liar, liar, liar."
But it isn't
true. In saying, as The New Republic is saying — blaring
— on its cover, that Bush is lying, we dilute the power of the charge.
The Left has made the term "racist" all but meaningless;
it would be a shame if we lost "liar" as well. The
New Republic is — to borrow a phrase from the New York senator
whom Hillary succeeded — defining lying down. They are rushing to
the old tu quoque: and the charge that Bush is lying, if
"lying" means anything, is itself a lie.
Come on, guys.
Oppose if you must — and you must — but, really. Or, as Shakespeare
put it, “Et tu, quoque?”
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