By John Ellis
January 18, 2010

When politicians are caught out in lies, their supporters often resort to
the old cliché: all politicians lie. But that is itself a lie: most don’t.
Even among those who do, there are enormous differences in the importance
and frequency of the lies. And it surely now clear that this nation has a
far from routine problem in the scale and regularity of President Obama’s
lying.

When politicians lie they are usually trying to avoid political damage, or
to make themselves look good. Bill Clinton lied (and got himself impeached)
to avoid embarrassment about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Hillary
Clinton lied about being under fire in Bosnia to enhance her non-existent
foreign affairs profile. Richard Nixon was forced from office because he
lied to cover up his involvement in a political dirty trick. John Kerry lied
about his Vietnam combat experience to blunt his anti-military reputation.
But Barack Obama’s lies are far more corrosive and destructive, because they
go the heart of legislation and governance, and so seriously undermine trust
in government. His lies generally take a specific form: they attempt to
persuade people to vote for him or his policies by categorically assuring
them that they need not have the anxieties that they have been expressing.
They say, essentially: trust me, support what I want, and I promise that
what your fear will never happen. But in every case it soon becomes clear
either that he knew perfectly well that what the public feared would in fact
happen, or that he was giving a firm assurance that he was in no position to
give, or that he had no intention of following through on his promise.

The accumulated weight of Obama’s deceit is overwhelming:

During his campaign for the presidency and since, Obama repeatedly assured
us that he would protect Medicare against cuts; but he now presses for
passage of bills that include savage cuts in Medicare.

To obtain passage of his first stimulus bill, Obama assured us that 90% of
the jobs created would be in the private sector; but as he well knew, most
of them were to be in the public sector.

Early in the health care debate, Obama assured us that he had not said that
he favored a single payer system; but he was on record as having said
exactly that.

Obama gave primary voters a firm assurance that if he became the nominee of
the Democratic party he would (unlike Hillary Clinton) abide by the campaign
finance limits of public funding; but as soon as he became the party’s
nominee, he reneged on that pledge.

During the presidential campaign Obama criticized the presence of former
lobbyists in the Bush administration and solemnly assured us that he would
appoint no lobbyists to his administration; but once elected he proceeded to
appoint even more lobbyists than his predecessors.

Obama criticized the size of George Bush’s deficit and promised to stop
deficit spending if elected; but he has already quadrupled the size of the
deficit he objected to and recklessly continues new federal spending in the
trillions.

When campaigning Obama criticized bills before the congress that were too
long for anyone to be able to read and promised to stop that; but the bills
he has been backing throughout his first year are much longer (at 2000+
pages) than the ones he criticized.

Candidate Obama promised an end to the corruption of earmarks and pork, but
in the bills he has supported this year there have been more and bigger
earmarks than ever before.

Candidate Obama promised us that CIA personnel involved in the interrogation
of terrorists would not be prosecuted; but his administration is now doing
exactly that.

Obama assured a joint session of Congress that the health bill he supported
(pre-Stupak) would not provide public funding for abortions; but bitter
resistance on the part of House Democrats to inclusion of language to that
effect soon proved that it did not yet exclude such funding.

Candidate Obama promised that he would make sure that there was always
enough time for the public to read legislation before it was enacted; but he
has done exactly the opposite, repeatedly pressing for even faster passage
of even longer bills.

Candidate Obama met fears that he would be a tax and spend liberal by
promising, emphatically and repeatedly, that those earning under $250,000
would see no increase in their taxes of any kind; but he now urges passage
of a healthcare bill that breaks that pledge in many different ways, and his
unrestrained increase in federal spending makes more tax increases
inevitable.

Candidate Obama promised bipartisanship and an end to partisan bickering;
but in a display of especially ruthless partisanship his allies have shut
Republicans out of all key meetings on his health care initiative, with the
unprecedented result that domestic legislation of historic importance
garnered not a single Republican vote in the Senate.

Candidate Obama criticized his opponent’s plan to tax employer paid
healthcare benefits, and promised he would not tax them; but the bill he now
backs would do just that.

Obama had promised that he would not sign a healthcare bill that would add
one dime to the federal deficit; but the bill he now backs adds trillions in
new federal spending, offset only by new sources of revenue that are both
uncertain and more properly seen as offsetting the already existing deficit.

Obama coerced congress into passing his stimulus bill by promising that if
it were passed unemployment could go no higher then 8%; but unemployment is
now at 10%, and he could not possibly have had good reason to exclude that
possibility.

Obama promised that his cap and trade legislation will create jobs; but its
massive tax increases are sure to hobble the economy and destroy jobs, while
green jobs in significant numbers can at best be hoped for, but never
promised.

Obama has repeatedly assured the American people that if they like their
current health plan they can keep it; but the House bill which he has
supported creates huge incentives for employers to drop their coverage and
shift their members to a public option.

Obama has often assured the public that under his health plan everyone will
be able to keep their current doctor; but many are certain to lose their
doctors when ObamaCare’s large cuts in Medicare funding induce more doctors
to withdraw from Medicare, as they also would were employers to transfer
patients to a public option to save themselves money.

Obama assured a joint session of Congress that his health plan would not
fund illegal aliens; but his allies had been busy voting down amendments to
that effect. (This was the point of Joe Wilson’s outburst.)

Obama claimed that John Deere’s CEO had told him that Deere would begin
hiring again as a result of the stimulus bill; but that individual
immediately announced that he had said no such thing, and that Deere would
in fact be laying off more workers.

Candidate Obama promised that Guantanamo would be closed by January 1, 2010;
but it is still open.

Candidate Obama promised that his administration (unlike his predecessor’s)
would be so transparent that TV cameras (C-Span) would be there for key
deliberations; but an unprecedented level of secrecy prevails as the final
stages of ObamaCare are negotiated behind closed doors and kept so secret
that even the Senate majority whip admitted that he had no idea what was
going on. Requests for Obama to honor the promise of C-Span cameras are
being ignored.

To gain traction for his attempt to return a would-be socialist dictator in
Honduras to power, Obama claimed that he had been overthrown in an illegal
coup; but the congressional research service pointed out correctly that
ex-President Zelaya had been removed for constitutionally sufficient cause
by legal and constitutional means.

Obama claims that he wants a public option only to increase choice and
competition; but the House bill would clearly reduce choice both by
squeezing unsubsidized private health plans out of the market, and by
setting rigid conditions for acceptable plans that would narrow available
options.

Candidate Obama claimed that violent radical Bill Ayers was just another guy
in his neighborhood; but the record shows that the two had worked closely
together.

Obama assured us that his stimulus bill would create or save a million jobs;
but he was claiming as fact what could never have been more than a wild (and
highly improbable) guess, and his more recent attempts to justify that guess
have been fraudulent.

Obama assured us that his health plan would never ration care, or “pull the
plug” on grandma; but the legislation he backs sets up panels to make
crucial decisions on when to withhold care, and it makes such deep cuts in
Medicare that rationing is inevitable.

Obama now assures us that health insurance premiums will not go up if
ObamaCare becomes law, insisting indignantly that people who say this have
not read the bill; but the legislation forces insurers to cover preexisting
conditions, which will compel them to raise premiums substantially.

This is an extraordinary record of serial mendacity. One or two instances
might charitably be regarded as rash promises later regretted, or as the
wishful thinking of someone who had not thought through the implications of
what he was saying. But when it happens again and again–and my 30 instances
are by no means exhaustive–only one judgment seems possible: this is the
record of a habitual, shameless liar, a man who will say anything to get
what he wants. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, goes
the old saying. But scores of times? How shameful is that for the country
when this disgraceful record is never the subject of a reproachful editorial
in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CBS news? Richard Nixon was
removed from office, and Bill Clinton impeached for a single lie. Who could
look at Obama’s record without concluding that his lying is in a completely
different league to theirs?

President Obama evidently believes that he can solve any problem with a
speech. But he doesn’t really care whether what he says is true or not, nor
does he feel any responsibility to honor the assurances and promises he
makes. As a result, this nation is now in a position where it cannot believe
a word that he says, and that gives us an unprecedented crisis of confidence
in the Presidency. Democratic government will atrophy if we allow lying on
this scale to count as the business as usual of politics. When will the
press and the Congress hold him accountable?

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John Ellis is President of the California Association of Scholars, and a
Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz

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