The value of political honesty

Since we were young, we were raised to value honesty in ourselves and others.
We’re repeatedly told that George Washington fessed up about the cherry tree, that our pants will be set ablaze if we lie and that Pinocchio’s nose grew.

So it makes sense that we carry that value into the political arena.

More and more resources are available to us to check the veracity of every political event.

The 24-hour newsrooms catch the tiniest gaffes, and websites like Politifact and Factcheck grew popular by attempting to give truth ratings to various statements from politicians.

When I talk to my peers, they often express dislike for a candidate by attacking a politician’s perceived sincerity.

Even if they can’t elaborate, it seems a lot of Americans have a firm opinion as to who the truly honest politicians are, and it just so happens that the belief often aligns with the candidate their party has tossed into the ring.

Honesty seems to be a special concern to many Americans during this convention season.

After the Republican National Convention, Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., attracted much flak for a speech that contained some lies and a lot of what was seen as spin or perspective.

Media outlets covered these more substantial discrepancies before gleefully jumping on a lie about Ryan’s marathon time.

He said two hours and fifty-something, but it was actually four hours.

The Democratic National Convention this week is sure to attract similar coverage, especially from disgruntled Republicans who would like to prove that they are not the only ones who can stretch the truth.

But most Americans’ fascination with honesty extends far beyond one convention season and one convention speech.

Polls show that Americans repeatedly rank honesty as one of the most important factors in voting for a candidate.

In a 2000 Pew poll, 84 percent of Americans said it was very important for them to learn about a candidate’s reputation for honesty, ahead of issues like the candidate’s voting record and the candidate’s major financial contributors.

More recently, Pew asked voters for one word that best described Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney.

Some of the top words and the number of people who said it out of the 1,010 surveyed: 32 people said honest, five said phony, 13 said liar, nine said fake, eight said sincere and six said dishonest.

Pew hasn’t done the same question for President Barack Obama yet, but I bet the results would have a similar dissonance. 

We value honesty in our politicians, but our belief in who is telling the truth often seems to fall along party lines.

We forgive the lies of our tribe but demand blood when the other tribe commits the same sin.

It makes me question, given most Americans’ poor ability and opportunity to seriously judge a candidate’s honesty, if we mistakenly overvalue it.

It’s a nice political buzzword, but like a lot of other political terms, it can often mean different things from person to person.

Thinking our candidate is the honest one might just be one more cognitive bias that we fall prey to as voters.

I’m not saying telling the truth is not a valuable and responsible trait and that certain candidates don’t lie to a reprehensible degree.

But given the flurry of sound bites, the barrage of media sources and the necessary entertainment that campaign season is, I urge you to pause before you declare your candidate or your party the honest one.

Remember there are different sized lies, and some truths are greater than others.
I’m less concerned about Ryan’s marathon time than I am his assertion that Obama was to blame for America’s credit downgrade when the rating agency explicitly blamed the GOP.

Campaigning comes with a good deal of theater. Before you judge a candidate on a vague notion of sincerity, look at his party’s platform and his stance on pertinent issues rather than any sense you have of his genuineness. 

Even if you don’t listen to my warnings about trusting a political actor’s honesty, you may find that your political beliefs, and your opinion of his honesty, always line up.

­— gwinslow@indiana.edu