Blog prompt 1

Why is walking the fine line between deceiving and truth-telling so prevalent in politics? Is deception a necessary tool for politicians / political campaigns? Why or why not?

The answer to both these questions is simple but also complex in nature. Upon reading the article, "lie or lose" it is clear that politicians fear if they do not tell the public what they want to hear, that they will be crushed by their opponents.  What the public wants to hear, in many cases is not the truth. Let me be clear, we want to know the truth, but mostly we want the truth to be good, or what we want to hear. Many times politicians will simply tell us what we want to hear even if they know it is completely false. For example during the 1988 presidential race George Bush Senior said: " Read my lips, no new taxes". It is said that many economists knew this to be an outright lie, but Bush had determined he could not risk telling the public the truth. After examining this example it should be clear that deceiving is both  prevalent and necessary for politicians, for they fear they can not win an election without it.