It is likely that President Trump lied more than most presidents. What is striking about his lies, however, is that they have tended to be told to defend his own self-image or political viability rather than in service of some central political good.

Indeed, some of President Trump’s more implausible lies seemed best understood as tests of loyalty; those in his circle who repeated his most obvious lies demonstrated their loyalty to President Trump in doing so. Most recently, he has attacked as disloyal those members of the Republican Party who have not repeated his false claims about electoral fraud.

Recent studies indicate that President Biden, thus far, has not shown himself equal to President Trump in his deceptiveness. He has, however, made deceptive and misleading claims on a number of topics, ranging from the costs of particular policies to his own history and early life. These lies seem somewhat unlike those told by Lincoln and by Roosevelt; they seem generally told in the interests of making a rhetorical point more powerful rather than as necessary means to an otherwise unobtainable political goal. They seem, in that respect, less morally justifiable than these earlier falsehoods.

A justification for these lies might be found with reference to practices which – like warfare or politics – necessarily involve conflict and gamesmanship. No one would expect honesty from the enemy side during warfare, and perhaps one should not from opponents in politics either. Some political philosophers have thought that, when politics becomes an adversarial game, politicians might be forgiven when they seek to deceive the other party. President Biden might rely upon this idea, and could note that the Republican Party is less open to bipartisan negotiation than at any time in its history.

Even this last justification, however, may not be enough. Lying to one’s political opponents might be permitted in an adversarial context. The lies told by presidents are often addressed to constituents, and such deception seems harder to justify.

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And finally, even the most important of lies must be believed for it to be justifiable; a lie that is immediately recognized as such is unlikely to achieve the goal justifying that lie. This is an increasingly difficult burden. Modern presidents find it more challenging to lie without having their lies recognized as untrue than presidents serving before the advent of social media and dedicated fact-checking.

If presidents must sometimes lie to defend important political values, then, it seems as though the good president must be both able to lie and able to lie well.

This is updated version of an article first published on September 17, 2020.

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Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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