Why Presidential Lies Are Even Worse Than They Seem

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- President Donald Trump is a liar — hardly the first but certainly the worst among U.S. presidents. By one count, he has made about 18,000 false or misleading claims, an unmistakable sign of his willingness to deceive.

His supporters do not seem especially bothered. They focus on what Trump does, not on whether he tells the truth.

Which raises a question: Is presidential lying really so bad?

Actually, it’s worse than bad, and for reasons much broader than the dangerous confusion it has sown during the coronavirus pandemic. To see why, let us consult two moral traditions that have explored what's wrong with lying, and what makes it so corrosive.

The first is rooted in the work of Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century German philosopher who emphasized the importance of treating people as ends rather than mere means. The second comes from Jeremy Bentham, Kant’s younger British contemporary and the founder of utilitarianism.

Kant wrote, “By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man.”  

The Kantian tradition sees lying as a form of disrespect. As Harvard philosopher Christine Korsgaard puts it, “Lying is wrong because it violates the autonomy of the person to whom you lie.”

For Kantians, a lie denies the agency of its victims, making it akin to an act of violence. It counts as one of the roots of human evil.

Liars treat others as mere means — as instruments for their own use. By resorting to deception, liars undermine people’s ability to make their own decisions. That is degrading, a form of contempt. Liars refuse to recognize the dignity of their victims.

By contrast, the Benthamite tradition focuses on the destructive consequences of lies. When people lie, they destroy trust. And when trust is destroyed, it becomes difficult or perhaps impossible for people to create cooperative or productive relationships. 

As philosopher Sissela Bok has written, “A society, then, whose members were unable to distinguish truthful messages from deceptive ones, would collapse." For example, "A warning that a well was poisoned or a plea for help in an accident would come to be ignored unless independent confirmation could be found.”  

Even seemingly small lies, within the family or the workplace, can be far more corrosive than they might seem. They undermine subsequent interactions, giving rise to a pervasive and soul-crushing question: Can I trust what is being said now?

If that question is constantly being asked, institutions become unable to function well. They may not be able to function at all. As Augustine said, “When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.” Augustine also said, “To use speech, then, for the purpose of deception, and not for its appointed end, is a sin.”

Turn to Trump’s lies in this light. 

When Trump lies to his fellow Americans, he treats them with contempt. He is denying a central premise of democracy itself: the sovereignty of the citizenry. 

A president who lies does not enlist guns or spears, but he uses what is, in an important sense, their moral equivalent. He acts as if citizens are mere instruments for his own use. 

On Benthamite grounds, the objection is more complicated, but it is not weaker. For many citizens, Trump’s lies are inducing a kind of democratic vertigo.

Sometimes he tells the truth, and sometimes he doesn’t. Who knows which is which? And besides, his opponents are liars, too, or so he says — and perhaps he is telling the truth on that count, at least.

When citizens learn that their president has lied to them, many of them feel rage. Many others become indifferent. They tune out. All things become doubtful.

That accounts for the power, and the irony, of Trump’s cry of “fake news.” Some news is indeed fake. But when the claim of fake news is itself fake news, well, it’s a mess.

Presidential lies cut the legs out from under democratic processes, by making it difficult or impossible for citizens to know what is true. They cast contempt on the very idea of self-government.

Worst of all, their corrosive effect is going to be difficult to reverse. By acting as if there is no norm in favor of truth-telling, Trump has weakened that very norm for Democrats and Republicans alike.

Francis Hutcheson, another 18th-century philosopher, anticipated the resulting situation. “Suppose men imagined there was no obligation to veracity, and acted accordingly,” he wrote, adding, “Men would only speak in bargaining, and in this, too, would soon lose all mutual confidence.”

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Cass R. Sunstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the author of “The Cost-Benefit Revolution” and a co-author of “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness.”

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