When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences

In 1964, as Congress prepared to vote on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing the use of force in Vietnam, Senator William Fulbright said that he simply did not "normally assume" that "a President lies to you." That was a mistake, according to Alterman's compendious history of Presidential lying. Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, refers to the Bush Administration as a "post-truth Presidency," but in general he is hardest on Democrats. He writes of Roosevelt's "deliberate mendacity" at Yalta and Kennedy's "nasty double game" during the Cuban missile crisis-tactics that, respectively, he claims, started and deepened the Cold War. Alterman argues that such behavior, whatever its justification, invariably exacts a price-L.B.J.'s lies about the Tonkin incident consumed his Presidency-and that the greatest dangers come when an Administration starts to believe its own lies. Copyright 2005 The New Yorker