For a politician, candor is a sin
It’s not so much lies and dishonesty that get politicians in trouble with the public; it’s truth and their candor.
In the excerpts from her paid speeches to financial institutions and corporate audiences that have been recently leaked, The New York Times reported, Hillary Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere. Citing the back-room deal-making and arm-twisting used by Abraham Lincoln, she mused on the necessity of having “both a public and a private position” on politically contentious issues.
We and Clinton can dream about what a better world might be. World peace, equality and the elimination of poverty are things we can dream about and strive for, even though there is little chance of achieving them. So, too, are “open trade and open borders.” How difficult would life be if we could not travel from state to state in our own country without a visa and passing through customs? Wouldn’t it be great if we had that freedom of travel everywhere? But that’s not the world we know, nor will it ever be in our lifetime, only in dreams.
Free trade is a benefit to all. It allows U.S. manufacturers to sell their products overseas without duty or taxes, and it allows us to buy goods from other countries at low prices. But it seems these days the only one publicly endorsing free trade – traditionally a Republican ideal – is President Obama. Endorsing trade deals like NAFTA and the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership may be possible in private but, these days, political suicide if voiced publicly.
In a political advertisement supporting Clinton, David Letterman on a 2012 show is grilling Donald Trump, asking him why Trump shirts and ties are made in China and Bangladesh. “We employ people in Bangladesh. They have to work, too,” he says with a shrug. That’s certainly true, and Bangladeshi workers and American consumers both benefit from the arrangement, but it’s better to say that in private than to a public whipped into a frenzy of protectionist sentiment by both major parties.
Having both a private and a public position on contentious issues may indeed define hypocrisy, but it is an essential posture for all politicians and diplomats and always has been.
In 1513, Niccolo Machiavelli finished writing “The Prince,” a sort-of manual for rulers. He wrote that it is necessary for those in power to appear virtuous and to espouse virtue in everything they say, even though it may be critical for them to be dishonest, cruel, miserly and crafty in their actions.
“A certain Prince of our own days,” Machiavelli wrote, “whose name it is as well not to mention, is always preaching peace and good faith, although the mortal enemy of both; and both, had he practiced them as he preaches them, would, oftener than once, have lost him his kingdom and authority.”
For a politician, candor is a sin. Being truthful and honest will get them nowhere with an audience with no patience for reality.
Machiavelli wrote: “But men are so simple, and governed so absolutely by their own needs, that he who wishes to deceive will never fail in finding willing dupes.”