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September 29, 2004
Trust
Several years ago Eleanor Clift, a very liberal editor at Newsweek, said something that really caused me to respect her as honest. She was on some TV talk show where the topic was the trustworthiness of politicians. Someone in the audience said he knew all about corrupt politicians since his senator was Jesse Helms. Clift pointed out that even though she disagreed with Seantor Helms about pretty much everything, that he was still extremely honest and definitely not corrupt. There is difference between being wrong or disagreeing about something and being dishonest about something.
This AP story today claims that people are losing trust in various officials. The most disturbing part fo the story isn't how people mistrust leaders (that may be called for), but how quick they are to mistrust people who they disagree with. Take this quote for instance: Bushs score resulted from more polarized rankings, with those viewing him as totally trustworthy balanced by others with a diametrically opposing view.
This is dangerous. Bush is a fairly honest politician and many of the Bush lied!!!! types never point to any knowingly false statements (the normal rational standard for lying) by Bush. For instance WMD. Bush was probably mistaken about them, but that does not mean he lied.
Dishonesty and honesty can occur independent of someones beliefs about things. For instance I think both Reagan and Carter were fairly honest presidents. Now I agree much more with Reagan than with Carter and think that Carter was arguably the worst president of the twentieth century (Buchanan being worst of all time) while Reagan was a very good president. But Carter never struck me as being dishonest while he was president.
Posted by Pete at September 29, 2004 05:02 PM
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