Who’s Lying?
A silly, but understandable, charge against W.

By Jay Nordlinger, NR managing editor.
May 11, 2001 2:10 p.m.

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?”