{"id":569,"date":"2003-08-28T15:27:34","date_gmt":"2003-08-28T20:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/569.html"},"modified":"2003-08-28T15:27:34","modified_gmt":"2003-08-28T20:27:34","slug":"washington-monthlys-mendacity-index","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/washington-monthlys-mendacity-index\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Monthly’s ‘Mendacity Index’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know magazines do subjective rankings and lists to serve as “conversation pieces” instead of meaningful analyses, but the Washington Monthly published a poll this week on presidential lying<\/a> that I found both fun and fascinating.<\/p>\n

As Washington Monthly explained, the magazine assembled a “nominating committee of noted journalists and pundits to pick the most serious fibs, deceptions, and untruths spoken by each of the four most recent presidents.” Among the participants on this committee were liberals such as Joe Conason and Michael Kinsley, and conservatives such as Tony Blankley and Jonah Goldberg.<\/p>\n

Then Washington Monthly assembled a less-ideological panel of judges, including relative centrists such as Larry Sabato, Juan Williams, and Jodie Allen, to rank the presidential misstatements on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the worst\/biggest lie.<\/p>\n

After they voted, the mag averaged the scores and gave each president a rating. The Washington Monthly is under no illusions about the scientific reliability (or lack thereof) of such an endeavor. As they put it, “We believe their validity rests somewhere between the Periodic Table and the U.S. News & World Report college rankings.”<\/p>\n

When the votes were tallied, guess who came in first (or last, depending on how you look at it) with the biggest lies? George W. Bush!<\/p>\n

The results were as follows: George W. Bush with a 3.6 rating, Bill Clinton got a 3.1 rating, George H.W. Bush earned a 3.2 rating, and Ronald Reagan garnered a 3.3 rating.<\/p>\n

It’s worth adding that the mag allows readers to vote<\/a> on each president’s “dishonesty” ranking. As of a minute ago, George W. Bush was faring the worst among these voters as well.<\/p>\n

While the results were interesting, it was even more fun to look at which presidential lies made the list and what score they were awarded.
\n
\nReagan<\/a>, for example, had two lies with rankings near 5. First was Reagan’s claim that he could cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget within 3 years. This one garnered a 4.5 rating among Washington Monthly’s experts.<\/p>\n

The next was Reagan’s November 1986 claim, “We did not — repeat, did not — trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we,” regarding the Iran-contra scandal. (This, for my money, was the worst presidential lie in U.S. history.) The magazine’s panel gave this one a 4.6 rating, which incidentally, was the highest rating for any lie, for any president, among the experts asked to participate in this survey.<\/p>\n

The panel found Reagan’s more mundane lies, such as insisting in 1980 that “trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” and Reagan’s patently false claim about being assigned by a U.S. Army unit to film Nazi death camps during WWII, to be less serious.<\/p>\n

The first President Bush<\/a> fared a little better than his former boss. Like Reagan, H.W. Bush’s worst lie was considered his false remarks about being “out of the loop” on Iran-contra, which garnered a 4.0 rating. The panel was more forgiving when it came to lies such as “Read my lips: no new taxes,” which only generated a 2.8 rating.<\/p>\n

The nominating panel came up with Clinton’s biggest hits<\/a>, including, of course, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” (which got a 4.1), but none of his lies were considered terribly malevolent. I know I’m ridiculously biased on the matter, but looking over Clinton’s misstatements, they hardly seem as important as his colleagues’ falsehoods. After all, they got Bill on inconsequential stuff like saying he remembered hearing about the Iowa caucuses since he was a young boy (the Iowa caucuses didn’t start until Clinton was in college). Not exactly life or death stuff.<\/p>\n

This leads us to our current Oval Office occupant, George W<\/a>. The Washington Monthly panel hit Bush hardest on Iraq-war related lies, giving his infamous “16 words” a 4.5 rating, and labeling Bush’s claim, “We found the weapons of mass destruction,” a 3.8. (I definitely would have given that more than a 3.8, but they didn’t ask me.)<\/p>\n

Moreover, they left out some other Bush lies that I found completely over-the-top, including Bush’s recent claim that Saddam Hussein never let U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq<\/a>, which is obviously false.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Bush’s overall rating of 3.6 makes him the biggest fibber of the last generation of presidents. Congrats to the winner, or in this case, the loser.<\/p>\n

Don’t forget, you too can play along<\/a> and give each of the presidents a rating of your own and you can check each of the lies and their relative rating<\/a> at the Washington Monthly’s site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know magazines do subjective rankings and lists to serve as “conversation pieces” instead of meaningful analyses, but the Washington Monthly published a poll this week on presidential lying that I found both fun and fascinating. As Washington Monthly explained, the magazine assembled a “nominating committee of noted journalists and pundits to pick the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}