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Jacob Shahidi

Professor Seng

Writing 001-2

September 28, 2010

Why must they lie?

Political dishonesty has a plethora of different reasons behind it. People always tend to believe

that these reasons are for the politicians benefit rather than the benefit of the people that he serves.

However what people seem to not understand is that the politicians believe that their dishonesty is

necessary. The degree of dishonesty in politics is for the benefit of the politicians and, in their minds, of

the people they serve.

Politicians have one main goal in their mind and that is to gain public favor. A popular way to

gain public favor is to appeal to a specific group of voters (conservatives, liberals, etc.). When they have

found their target audience they bring attention to certain “hot” topics and take specific stands that would

lead to them gaining the most positive response from their target audience (such as preaching to take

action against the recent oil spill that has taken place in the gulf coast). This process of gaining the favor

of potential voters is needed so that politicians can be voted into their desired positions and from there

they can continue to make decisions on various issues.

Political dishonesty comes into play during the time that politicians are seeking potential voters.

At this point in their election process they are willing to do anything so that they can get voted into office.

A fairly accurate example that I noticed was during the 2006 United States Senate election. One of the

candidates, Christine O’Donnell, proclaimed that she graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University,

had studied Post Modernism in the New Millennium at Oxford University, and had been working

toward a master’s degree at Princeton University. She later acknowledged that all of these claims

were false. She revealed that she had not actually graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University

until 2010 and that the course she had taken at Oxford had nothing to do with Post Modernism in
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the New Millennium and to add even further to her shameful list she revealed that she had not

even taken any courses at Princeton. Everything that she had said about her educational record

was a bold faced lie. Clearly Miss O’Donnell wanted to present herself to her voters as an

educated woman who was prepared for the position that she wanted. Much like how Orwell said

that “[a] person who uses [language] has [their] own private definition, but allows [their] hearer

to think [they mean] something quite different” (Clark 168). In the case of Miss O’Donnell, she

knew that she had not studied Post Modernism in the New Millennium and that she had not taken

any courses at Princeton, but when she presented herself as a person who had, she wanted her

audience to derive their own idea of her while she was the only one who knew the truth.

Although a majority of the dishonesty from politicians is for their own benefit, sometimes they

believe that it is also for the benefit of their people. Many times politicians decide to be dishonest because

they believe that if they come out with the truth then it will cause an upset in public moral. Regardless of

what outcomes this idea has, politicians do this with good intentions towards their people rather than just

worrying about their relationship with the public.

Possibly the best example of a government withholding information because they feel that their

people would be better off without it would come from the political novel 1984, by George Orwell. In the

world of 1984 Orwell portrays a world where the government withholds almost all information pertaining

to its people. The only things that people are allowed to know are manipulated stories and articles by

government officials. This government also uses a mind control device called Doublethink which calls its

users to hold two contradictory statements in their minds and wholeheartedly believe both of them. This

government believes that by controlling their people’s thought process they can keep them in a constant

state of obedience, which they believe is for their benefit. Why would a government voluntarily force

their people into a state of constant panic? The answer is that they would not; it is an illogical idea. With

this mindset they believe that they are both benefiting themselves and their people. William Lutz notes

that this type of manipulation also exists within our society today. He tells his readers that doublethink
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exists in our world but in the form of speech (doublespeak). He portrays this manipulation of language by

revealing that in 1984, the U.S. Department decided not to use the word “killing” in their annual reports,

but rather they will use “unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life” (Clark 178). This exchange of words

creates a reduced reaction from the public because “kill” has a more dynamic affect on a human being

than “unlawful deprivation of life”, which in turn shows how the government can control their public’s

reactions through dishonest language.

Much like in the political system of 1984 and in our modern politics, politicians utilize dishonest

language to control the people they serve because they believe that their people will benefit from their

lack of accurate knowledge and that they themselves will benefit as well. This use of dishonest language

is a very risky thing to do; not only because the result of appealing to people on such unstable grounds

will eventually lead to a reprehensible outcome but also because this constant dishonesty will lead the

public to believe that “politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia” (Clark

171). The public will no longer see politics as service to them but rather they will see it as a manipulated

process that allows masters of dishonest language climb up the ladder of power.