Rex Murphy: Contest of the liars — Bill Clinton vs. Barack Obama <http://license.icopyright.net:80/rights/oneButtonTag.act?tag=3.12386?icx_id=168444>
Rex Murphy <http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/author/rmurphynp/> | November 15, 2014 6:30 AM ET More from Rex Murphy <http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/author/rmurphynp/> [image: Clinton, at least, merely sought to cover up his own sex drive. Obama was seeking to change the law of the land.] Getty ImagesClinton, at least, merely sought to cover up his own sex drive. Obama was seeking to change the law of the land. We all know, or I should say, we all used to know that Satan, the Adversary, was the father of lies. Alas, the Grand Serpent’s claim to that dubious paternity has long since been challenged by more fertile and febrile monsters, among which louche set none can claim first rank with more authority than the tongue-torquing, lip-biting prevaricators of modern politics. As for old Nick, when he was Lie-Master-in-Chief, He at least was clear on one thing: That a lie was, indeed, a lie. Not even in the broiling stews of Hell would He have tried to imply otherwise. He treasured His lying, tied it in fact to matters of apocalyptic consequence: the loss eternal of souls and endless perdition and pain. But not even Nicky had the brass to claim a lie as truth, or a lie as a disguised virtue. That was left to the PR-bred, spin doctor-massaged politicians of our sad and weary day. Let us take the case of the great duplicitist himself, the Master, William Jefferson Clinton, a man who looked warily upon truth as the grease on the pole of his ambition. He knew it was an easier mast to climb when it had been studded with something more abrasive, when it had been gritted and rutted with evasions, equivocations, infinite parsing and jesuitical conjugations of the obvious. He splintered the pole with each evasion, scarred it with chop logic, and carved whole footholds with artful deceit. And subtle, too, he could be. “That depends on what the meaning of *is* is” is his most famous slip-slide into swampy semantics. Not many politicians can claim to have taken the wind of out the most fundamental verb in human history. Rarely has a lie, a straightforward brass-faced lie, been launched with such fulsome bravado, unshaven of all qualifications whatsoever Mr. Clinton’s most brass-faced lie, his Thermopylae stand against the truth and all its attendant soldiery, is now famous. People who cannot house a line of Lincoln in their iPhone brains store Clinton’s famed animadversion and denial, the immortal: *“I did not have sex with that woman … er … Ms. Lewinsky. “* He spoke this locus classicus of determined deceit, which at the time was hysterical in its rebuttal of reality. For at the moment the words were uttered he was living a White House sex fantasy in real time, featuring under-the-desk carnal ministrations from his intern-houri while he whispered diplomatic sweet-nothings to some foreign ambassador. History’s first *tête-à-tête-à-tête.* Clinton’s nose-telescoping gobsmacker was spoken with gritted teeth, live, into the eyes of a camera and watched by every American citizen. Rarely has a lie, a straightforward brass-faced lie, been launched with such fulsome bravado, unshaven of all qualifications whatsoever. Skip now to the current incumbent, the supercool master of the outright, non-subtle, brazen, full-on, deliberate lie. He sold the transformation of 20% of the American economy, the upheaval of its health-care system, and the launch of the error-riddled and Byzantine (the law is more than 20,000 pages long, with more to come) Obamacare. “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health-care plan you can keep your health-care plan. Period.” Those are Obama’s straightforward, urgently stated declarations — repeated on tape to audiences of thousands and on television to audiences of millions. The “period” was his anchor of assurance. No way you couldn’t keep your plan or your doctor. *Period.* As millions of Americans now know, of course, those were lies. And they were lies when they were made. The most central persuasion to have Americans vote or buy into Obamacare was a declaration from the herald of a new politics, of truth and transparency such as America had never seen, from the mouth of the angel of Hope and Change … all of it a damn lie. It was not a Clinton sex lie, a lie to excuse hormonal recreation, or fraternizing sexually with the White House help. This was a policy lie, from a man who came into the White House as a symbol of a new day in politics, a turning away from the mud and madness of Washington. But “you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan” was a deceit that would have shamed Nixon. Obama, the winged messenger of a new day, turns out to be as loose with the truth, and as comfortable with casting it aside, as the most pot-bellied, cigar-chomping ward-healer of old. Of these two, who lied least? I give Clinton a slight moral edge. He can plead his overactive sex drive, and he confined his lies to matters that (mainly) concerned him and Hillary and Monica. Obama’s, however, is far more serious. He was a president speaking as a president. He was changing the law. He was giving eye-to-camera assurances to Mr. and Mrs. America, and knew those assurances were false. Obama wins the lie tournament with the Clinton. But he was aided by a mindset. Obama is a progressive politician. He went to Harvard. He knows more than anybody else — and especially all those millions less intelligent than he — what is good for them. So with the smug, righteous and callous authority of the progressive, he was more than prepared to deceive those who elected him … and place his head on a soft pillow each night with the soothing thought, that — after all — he was lying to them for their own good. And who could know better than them what they really wanted but he himself? National Post http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/11/15/rex-murphy-contest-of-the-liars-bill-clinton-vs-barack-obama/ -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
