When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences

When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences. By Eric Alterman. New York: Viking Press, 2004. 477 pages. $27.95.

When Presidents Lie is not just about any old collection of presidential fibs or exaggerations. Cynics may contend that Presidents lie all the time, and that this has been a constant throughout history. But as author Eric Alterman points out, our acceptance of this "truth" is only moderately recent. What makes When Presidents Lie interesting and useful for the professional, however, is the second half of the title.

The targets of Alterman's presidential indictments are no less than FDR, Kennedy, Johnson, and Reagan. For those keeping count on some hypothetical balance sheet, that makes three Democrats, each considered "liberal" in his time, and one conservative Republican. The author skewers Roosevelt for misleading the people about the contents of agreements with the Russians during the course of the Yalta talks. Kennedy, a President whose reputation has faded considerably in the past two decades, is castigated for his deliberate misrepresentations about the deals he and his brother cut during the Cuban missile crisis. Johnson, perhaps the most hopeless of the four, is doubly damned. First, for believing Kennedy's lies, and then for acting upon the reports from the Tonkin Gulf and subsequently telling lies about the event even after he knew better. (Alterman contends that Johnson's immediate use of force following the initial news from the Tonkin Gulf was one of the "consequences" of the Kennedy-created myth of playing hardball in the Cuban missile crisis.) Finally, Reagan is pilloried for the Iran-Contra affair.

The lies Alterman details are not, generally, new knowledge. What is new about this book is that it brings together for the first time, in a single volume, evidence which had heretofore been scattered. Moreover, as the four case studies presented deal with national defense, international relations, and ultimately the application or threat of force, the book serves as an excellent single-source touchstone. For the military professional with deep ethical roots, it is a foundation-shaking and profoundly depressing read.

In other contexts, the author, Eric Alterman, serves as both a lightning rod and a litmus test. He is the author of the books Sound and Fury (which produced for the English language the neologism "Punditocracy"), What Liberal Media?, and the counter-Administration work, The Book On Bush, among others. He is also a prolific writer for The Nation and maintains his own politically oriented web-log, "Altercation," on MSNBC.com. In short, he is among the most prolific and impassioned writers on the political left. This must be acknowledged because this book, When Presidents Lie, is decidedly not political in the slant that it takes in addressing the evidence. It is a sure and steady work by a professional academic historian, scrupulously researched and rewritten over the course of 11 years. The author takes extraordinary care to ensure that the case studies and core of this book are not shaded by his political bias.

Indeed, one might well contend that he goes too far in this regard. Throughout much of the book the text dances along the fine line which separates traditional (read: "usually boring") purely academic works of history published by university imprints and the lighter writing styles pushed upon the public by the commercial "popular" press. At times, however, the academia comes through a little too strongly and one wishes for the passion which bubbles just beneath the words to burst forth onto the page. In the final analysis, however, it is probably best that Alterman restrained himself. The book is serious, the material is well presented, and the indictments set forth serve as a caution to us all.

Major Robert Bateman, currently assigned to the Multinational Security Transition Command--Iraq, in Baghdad.

COPYRIGHT 2005 U.S. Army War College
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group