Do You Have to be a Good Liar to Become a Politician?

It certainly seems as though the ability to lie is a useful skill to possess if you want to become a politician. Watch any interview with a politician and you will usually see him, or sometimes her, being as evasive as possible when asked perfectly reasonable questions. Politicians are supposedly there to defend the interests of the people who voted for them, though frequently they will create policies that seem to serve the interests of the rich and powerful. As soon as they are asked to defend their position, however, they find themselves being economical with the truth.

Rather than admitting back-room dealings and their close associations with certain entrepreneurs and high-profile figures they contend that what they're doing is for the greater good, when clearly it is about lining the pockets of people who are already wealthy. Once a would-be-politician has been elected he no longer cares about the little people or his integrity. He will tell you anything you want to hear in order to get elected, lending his name to his party's manifesto and claiming his support for policies which he will later tell you he was against all along.

If you want to become a politician it is therefore extremely helpful to be able to say what you know other people want to hear, even though you know it to be a lie. This is the media age when you have to constantly think about how your words will be reported online, in newspapers and on television. Journalists love sound bites and so it is much easier to think about what you are likely to be asked and how you intend to respond. Consequently, instead of actually answering the questions you are asked, you give generic responses which although not lies, hardly represent the truth.

Thus, to become a politician you have to be able to lie to your potential constituents. You will need to tell them that you're interested in their concerns and want to be their voice in parliament, when the reality is you'd probably never even visited the area before and you want to be elected for the prestige the post holds and so you can help out your chums. You then have to continue with the lies once you're elected. You can't give a straight yes or no answer to the questions you're asked, because that get you into far too much trouble. Imagine if you started a precedent of actually answering the question – it wouldn't go down well with your colleagues!

There may be some politicians out there who are honest and morally upstanding, but they are in the minority. Politics is a murky world and so it obviously helps to be ruthless with very few ethics and a willingness to lie. If you have difficulty lying and prefer to be honest then the chances are you wouldn't want to become a politician, anyway, especially when you know of the corrupting influence of power. You may start off whiter than white, but soon be drawn into the devious world of politics, so that it is best not to enter this arena in the first place!