First the Lying, Then the Pardons

First the Lying, Then the Pardons

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

When he announced the indictment of Scooter Libby, vice president Cheney's chief of staff, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald included a homily on the importance of truth. And in truth it sounded a bit quaint, like someone trying to recite the Sermon on the Mount on the floor of the New York stock exchange. But of course Fitzgerald was right. When lying becomes the accepted currency, you haven't got the rule of law but a criminal conspiracy.

All governments lie, but Reagan and his crew truly raised the bar. From about 1978 on, when the drive to put Reagan in the White House gathered speed, lying was the standard mode for Reagan, his handlers and a press quite happy to retail all the bilge, from the Soviet Union's supposed military superiority to the millionaire welfare queens on the South Side of Chicago.

The press went along with it. Year after year, on the campaign trail and then in the White House, the press corps reported Reagan's news conferences without remarking that the commander in chief dwelt mostly in a twilit world of comic-book fables and old movie clips. They were still maintaining this fiction even when Reagan's staff was discussing whether to invoke the 25th amendment and have the old dotard hauled off to the nursing home.

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