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A Legacy of Lies from the Clinton Years How the simple truth might have changed the course of this Presidency In the movie Liar, Liar, Jim Carrey plays a lawyer who is suddenly stricken with a condition near-fatal to someone in his line of work: He can't stop telling the truth. Of course, lawyers aren't the only people who won't give a straight answer these days. It's all of us. This may be the Information Age, but it's also the Era of Duplicity. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in America over the age of 10 who hasn't colored the truth once or twice -- make that once or twice this week. Certainly, many of us aging Aquarians have done more than our share of flat-out, low-down, no-account lying -- from dredging up any excuse to dodge the draft, to inflating our resumes, to filing shifty tax returns, to concocting elaborate cock-and-bull stories for our spouses. Having the Clinton Administration inflicted on the nation has been, as the touchy-feelers used to say, a learning experience. Almost seven years of listening to this pack of liars is enough to make anyone come clean and quit fibbing. Even as the Administration enters the twilight of its second term, the Clintonites can't stop dissembling. YEAH, RIGHT. So who really believes that Hillary didn't encourage Bill to offer a clemency deal to jailed Puerto Rican nationalists because she thought it would boost her fortunes in New York? Does anyone really believe that the White House and Attorney General Janet Reno aren't trying to nail FBI Director Louis Freeh to the cross of Waco because he refused to sweep the Clinton-Gore '96 campaign-finance scandal under the rug? And former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros didn't lie to federal investigators about payments to his mistress-from-hell. Yeah, right. Wouldn't it all have been so much simpler if Bill, Hillary, and their cadre of fabricators had been straight with us, starting with Gennifer Flowers and Whitewater. That might have set the tone for the new Presidency. Imagine a straight-talking Administration. No Waco whoppers. No Travelgate tales. No Filegate fibs. No Ken Starr. No Monica mess. No campaign-finance scandal. Maybe a live Vince Foster. And tens of millions of taxpayer dollars saved. LONGING FOR TRUTH. Instead, duplicity reigned. Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who supposedly carried a lantern through the streets of Athens searching for an honest man, would have come up empty if he had led a torchlit procession through the smoky back alleys of the Clinton years. Lying is tiring. Even bearing witness to the Clinton machinations can wear a body down. That's why we're so sick of this Administration. That's why Al Gore will never be President. That's why there is a longing in the land for a truth-teller. After poor Cisneros pleaded guilty on Sept. 7 to one misdemeanor count of lying to the lying FBI, The New York Times quoted him as saying that future candidates should learn that "truth and candor are important." In his book City Lights, Donald Barteleme said it best when he wrote: "I failed to discover the truth. I colored the truth with fancy. I had no respect for the truth. I failed to heed the adage, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Are you listening, all you wannabes in the 2000 Presidential race? Scotti, BW senior editor for government and sports business, offers his irreverent views every week for Business Week Online
EDITED BY DOUGLAS HARBRECHT
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