Do you think that politicians lie more than the average person?

Does the Pope wear a funny hat?

Yes, they have to. Which says a lot (negative) about the American system.

They lie for three basic reasons, which are all interrelated:

1) they lie because they have multiple constituencies and they want to appeal to (and get the votes) to be elected and reelected. This means, among other things, that they tell each group what that group wants to hear. Which means that some portion of the time they are lying.

2) same general answer, but more related to funding than electability, although they are tightly coupled. You don’t get elected without money, and the more someone contributes the more you are likely to ‘bend’ your thoughts to the folks who pay the bills.

3) Politicians are narcissists. They have a hugely inflated sense of self and sense of importance, which tend to outweigh any degree of honesty or consistency. Basically, the truth is what they say it is at the time they say it.

Together, there all sorts of incentives to be dishonest, and no incentive to be honest.

Do bears sha..la…lala…in the woods?

Yes, even taking into account that their actions are scrutinized more than your average citizen.

Part of the definition, really.

Yes, I think that they lie more than a typical person. There are probably two reasons:

1) They have more incentive to lie.
2) People who are willing to lie are more likely to advance further in politics, leading to a selective process.

all their lies have been catalogued for the whole world to mull over. Try living under that sort of scrutiny.
Also, sometimes campaign promises must be broken. They have to give up one to pursue another because there isn’t enough political capital to pursue both. But do constituents remember that the politician kept one promise? Or broke another? It’s a doubly re-enforcing system from both the side of the the politicians and the constituents.

I don’t think of what they say as lies as actually being true in their alternate reality.

Honest politician is a oxymoron, is it not?

Not one optimist on the subject of lying politicians… sad… You’re all right though.

I believe that a politician will certainly tell the truth as often as it will further his agenda.

I’m not sure that politicians do lie more than average people. I’m not aware of any evidence that suggests they do, and I’ve never seen any comparison between politicians and the average population regarding frequency of lying. It may be the case, but I don’t see any reason to believe so, other than it’s a repeated cliche that they do lie a lot.

I do think that they are probably more weasel-worded. Because most of what politicians say in public is recorded and scrutinised in the media, they’ve developed a very non-committal and evasive way of speaking—they can talk a lot and convey very little, and leave much to the interpretation of their constituents who perhaps filter what they hear through their own ideological framework.

There’s also the tendency to use slogans and sound-bites, which are efficiently persuasive and emotionally appealing to their target constituencies. This could be due to limited air-time, or journalists requiring short and snappy answers to their questions. It may also be that most people just don’t have the motivation or attention spans to listen to long analyses and rationales for various policy decisions.

I think what politicians are, and indeed have to be to be at all successful, is intellectually dishonest. They’re biased. They omit information. They cherry-pick data. They resort to rhetoric and appeals to emotion. However, I do not think they’re particularly special in this regard, and you can find the same tendencies in average people almost anywhere.

Do their lips move?