Remember the story of young George Washington and that unfortunate cherry tree?
As told by biographer Mason Locke Weems someone hacked down the Father of Our Country’s father’s fruit tree. When confronted about it, George owned up to the incident of botanicide with a proud ‘I cannot tell a lie.’
Of course, to Parson Weems the standard rules of biography — you know: evidence, fact, that sort of thing — came with those hand signal quote marks around them. As one reader of Weem’s book praised it as “eighty pages of as entertaining and edifying matter as can be found in the annals of fanaticism and absurdity.”
That’s right, it is unlikely Washington ever savaged his father’s favorite cherry tree. But it was Weems, not the great man, who stretched truth well beyond its breaking point.
We’ve been treated ever since to increasing doses of what Stephen Colbert referred to as “truthiness” — a position that will at least pass muster with the most partisan of supporters. It has become so bad that future historians will have to toss out most recorded words of our public and political figures. They may end up concluding that Weems and his whoppers weren’t so bad, by comparison.
Consider new anchor Brian Williams and his experiences “under fire.” Even worse, Richard Nixon and his series of cover ups to convince us he was not “a crook.” Or how about Bill Clinton’s infamous “I did not have sex with that woman.”
As it turns out, Clinton scores — sorry — fares well in the truth rankings, when his numbers are placed next to the more recent crop of politicians.
According to Angie Drobnic Holan, editor of the fact checking group PolitiFact, a solid half of what he said met the standards of true or mostly true. He edges Jeb Bush (48 percent), Barack Obama (48 percent) and Rand Paul (47 percent), but crushes the likes of Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum.
On the other hand, his “pants on fire” statements — defining those both inaccurate and ridiculous — match up with Santorum, Chris Christie and Joe Biden.
Now, PolitiFact did not check every single utterance for this particular ranking. Instead, they limited their study to statements considered significant or points with the potential to sway others.
The results are ugly.
Democratic also ran Bernie Sanders runs ahead of Hillary Clinton in the true or mostly true categories. The most accurate Republicans — Christie, Bush, Paul, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham — clobber their rivals.
Honesty, it seems, doesn’t pay.
Only 7 percent of frontrunner Donald Trump’s rampaging commentary proved true or mostly true. Another 17 percent were half truths. The remaining 76 percent fell into the mostly false, false or pants on fire categories. By comparison, Ted Cruz issues accurate statements 22 percent of the time.
By far the most errant has been Ben Carson. A mere 4 percent of the significant statements studied by the group met the fact checking tests. In impressive 84 percent of his out loud thoughts rated mostly false, false or pants on fire.
Yeah, when they reference a greater number of comments the data shifts. In one more comprehensive study, for example, Trump’s falsehood numbers drop into the 40 percent range.
It’s difficult to blame the politicians for bombarding us with half truths and outrageous feats of fiction. We accept the stories of those we support. We firmly believe the others to be the ones guilty of trampling the facts. We seek out confirmation only from like-minded sources.
Or, just maybe, we enjoy a good yarn — even from those we intend to place in the most important offices.
That’s what Parson Weems discovered. Even though readers doubted his tales of the young Washington, the cherry tree episode wove its way into the cultural narrative. Parents and teachers over the centuries passed that and other stories along. During the Civil War, soldiers by the score attempted to equal Washington’s supposedly powerful arm by hurling coins from the banks of the Rappahannock River.
Perhaps we just want something that doesn’t really exist.
