how can you tell if a politician is lying?

The answer to that old question, of course, is “his lips are moving”.

E.J. Montini of the Arizona Republic dug into this topic in more depth this morning. If you do not have a subscription, you will not be able to open the link, so I’ll post the entire column below:

 ************************************************

Steve Benson was the whitest white person I had ever come across.

That’s what I told my friends back east.

Benson, who died this week at 71, started at The Arizona Republic a few months after I did in 1980.

He was a buttoned-up, short-sleeved, necktie-wearing Mormon (the first one I’d ever met), and I was a black T-shirt, blue jeans, moustache and shaggy-haired steelworker’s kid from Pittsburgh (the first one he’d ever met).

Neither one of us could decide which of us was from another planet, and we argued about that until we finally figured out the answer:

We both were.

A newspaper is a lot like the Island of Misfit Toys

It is the nature of the news business.

Benson was the grandson of Ezra Taft Benson, who had been secretary of agriculture during the Eisenhower administration and became the president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which Benson defined for me (given my Roman Catholic roots) as “the Mormon pope.”

He was born into LDS royalty, and he chose as his life’s work … cartooning.

I was the grandson of Italian immigrants whose father, uncles, cousins and brother worked in a steel mill, and who also worked in a steel mill, but only to save money for college tuition, so instead of using his shoulders and backbone for work he could use his fingers … typing.

A newspaper can be the Island of Misfit Toys for people like us. A safe haven. A home.

Benson and I shared an important thing in common

Benson was wrong about everything in those days — an unyielding arch-conservative who somehow believed that I was wrong about everything. We talked just about every day, agreeing on nothing except that the other guy was misinformed, if not completely nuts.

Then, in the late 1980s, along came Gov. Evan Mecham, who was impeached and removed from office, and we found out that one thing we had in common was that a person’s honesty and integrity mattered more to each of us than anything else.

Political persuasion. Race. Religion. Anything.

For a time, we even took our show on the road, appearing at public gatherings where we spoke and answered questions, almost always about how wrong the other guy was, yet at the same time showing — without saying so — that it was possible for people who disagreed vehemently with each other to coexist.

To be friendly. To even be friends.

He never stopped using his pen as a stiletto

Of course, this still included over time Benson mocking me in caricature drawings and even lambasting me in a published editorial cartoon after I criticized Charles Barkley (then playing with the Phoenix Suns) over his politics.

When Benson became disillusioned with his church, discovering that his ailing grandfather was being manipulated, his personal, political and religious views did a 180, and we argued even more, only now with him complaining that I was nowhere near the fire-spewing liberal he thought I should be.

We saw each other only a few times after he was laid off, joking about how the journalistic island we’d washed up on had become a little less inviting for misfits.

“The two of us might have to find real jobs when we finally decide to grow up,” he told me. “At least you would.”

Ever profession has its share of crooks, even though the majority of the people in that profession are honest and hard work.

Having said that, though, it IS true that some professions are not respected as well as other professions:

According to the lates Gallup poll, nurses remain the most trusted profession.

Americans’ ratings of nearly all 23 professions measured in Gallup’s 2023 Honesty and Ethics poll are lower than they have been in recent years. Only one profession -- labor union leaders -- has not declined since 2019, yet a relatively low 25% rate their honesty and ethics as “very high” or “high.”

Nurses remain the most trusted profession, with 78% of U.S. adults currently believing nurses have high honesty and ethical standards. However, that is down seven percentage points from 2019 and 11 points from its peak in 2020.

At the other end of the spectrum, members of Congress, senators, car salespeople and advertising practitioners are viewed as the least ethical, with ratings in the single digits that have worsened or remained flat.

gallup.com/poll/608903/ethics-ratings-nearly-professions-down.aspx

2019	2022	2023	2023-2019
	%	%	%	pct. pts.
Advertising practitioners	13	15	8	−5 −5 −5
Bankers	28	26	19	−9 −9 −9
Business executives	20	14	12	−8 −8 −8
Car salespeople	9	10	8	−1 −1 −1
Chiropractors	41	--	33	−8 −8 −8
Clergy	40	34	32	−8 −8 −8
College teachers	49	--	42	−7 −7 −7
Dentists	61	--	59	−2 −2 −2
Engineers	66	--	60	−6 −6 −6
Insurance salespeople	13	--	12	−1 −1 −1
Journalists	28	23	19	−9 −9 −9
Labor union leaders	24	24	25	1 1 1
Lawyers	22	21	16	−6 −6 −6
Medical doctors	65	62	56	−9 −9 −9
Members of Congress	12	9	6	−6 −6 −6
Nurses	85	79	78	−7 −7 −7
Pharmacists	64	58	55	−9 −9 −9
Police officers	54	50	45	−9 −9 −9
Psychiatrists	43	--	36	−7 −7 −7
Senators	13	--	8	−5 −5 −

You probably noticed that politicians are the least respected profession, even tough there ARE some honest politicians.

Examples include Joe Biden, Barack Obama, John McCain and Jeff Flake.

It’s also not hard to find politicians who have no integrity at all, which SHOULD make the voting process easier,

During his first terms of office, the Washington Post kept trace of the number of lies told by Trump.

When The Washington Post Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims, we recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his presidency. On Nov. 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win reelection. This astonishing jump in falsehoods is the story of Trump’s tumultuous reign. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day. What is especially striking is how the tsunami of untruths kept rising the longer he served as president and became increasingly unmoored from the truth. Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims day in this third year — and 39 claims a day in his final year. Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and an additional 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later.

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FD/FD00/20240515/117301/HHRG-118-FD00-20240515-SD003.pdfdby Trump,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump

When Walter Cronkite was on the air, there were fewer shows on the air, a sharp contract to today when there are hundreds of channels to choose from in addition to the dizzying number of broadcasts – but it is still an easy choice.

It does not matter what a politician’s opinion is on immigration, gun control, abortion, religion, or taxes.

All you need to know is "is he honest?

That, my friends, is all you need to know.