Not A Liar

Nicholas Kristoff thinks it's bad to call Bush a liar. But look what he says about Bush in the same op-ed:

Bush "stretch[es] the truth," "exaggerat[es], and "carefully avoids the most blatant lies." [as opposed to less blatant lies?] When he says things that aren't true he "always has available a prima facie defense of confusion." Bush "was overzealous and self-deluded" and "surrounded himself with like-minded ideologues" who "deceived themselves along with the public". "[T]here are so many legitimate criticisms we can (and should) make about this president that we don't need to get into kindergarten epithets." "Mr. Bush got us into a mess by overdosing on moral clarity and self-righteousness, and embracing conspiracy theories of like-minded zealots."

But he's not a liar.

I agree that calling someone a liar can be a conversation stopper. And it can impede reasoned analysis. But what do you do when a person repeatedly says things that are not true, and insists on saying them over and over when people object that they are false? Perhaps Bush didn't really understand the economic consequences of his tax proposals in 2000 or who they would actually benefit. Perhaps he really changed his mind repeatedly about why he wanted tax cuts. Perhaps he really thought that there were weapons of mass destruction after all the evidence showed that this was wrong. But at some point, the number of false and misleading statements becomes so great that you have to assume that *some* of them were deliberate. At that point, what word can one use?

Kristoff is certainly correct that liberals should not become conspiracy theorists, or allow themselves to become blinded by rage. But they should not allow government officials to get away with making false and misleading statements repeatedly in order to justify policies that are bad for the nation. For too long the problem with liberals was that they allowed their political opponents to get away with bullying and prevarication. The left shouldn't lose its cool. But it has a moral obligation to speak truth to power.