Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign Discussion

There is good reason why Clinton’s trustworthiness ratings are very low and questions about her character have persisted. Clinton, however, is not the one who bullshits instinctively and essentially makes it a lifestyle choice.

The professor who wrote the insightful (and short!) book “On Bullshit” defined the difference between a liar and a bullshitter pretty well:

[QUOTE=Harry Frankfurt]
The distinction between lying and bullshitting is fairly clear. The liar asserts something which he himself believes to be false. He deliberately misrepresents what he takes to be the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, is not constrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. In making his assertion, he is indifferent to whether what he is says is true or false. His goal is not to report facts. It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of his listeners in a certain way.
[/QUOTE]

The sad truth is pretty much everyone lies at one point or another in their life. Doesn’t make it right or acceptable, and Clinton seems to have done it or danced on its edge enough times, albeit selectively, to warrant serious skepticism from here on out. She is not a bullshitter, though. Trump is in a universe of his own in that respect.

Normal candidates, like Clinton, usually have a few big lies to their name - from Nixon’s secret war in Laos and Cambodia while campaigning to end the war to Reagan and Iran-Contra to George H.W. Bush’s no new taxes pledge to Bill Clinton’s infamous press conference about Monica. Trump lives a lie though, since he seems to view every time he opens his mouth as another opportunity for salesmanship and “puffery:”

Meeting (and then definitely) not meeting Putin on 60 Minutes. John Miller/Baron as his trusted PR person talking to reporters. His assurance in 2011 that his investigators in Hawaii tracking down Obama’s real origin “couldn’t believe what they were finding” and his promise to reveal all the dirty details soon. Trump’s own admission in a deposition for a lawsuit that his own estimate of his net worth fluctuates not based on facts and figures, assets or losses, but his own feelings any given day. That American muslims celebrated 9/11 that day by the thousands. Trump saying that it was well established that he was against the 2003 Iraq war from the beginning and that he foresaw that it would destabilize the Middle East.

His own supporters think his claim about building the wall isn’t real. Trump has no credibility. Clinton has a little.

So, maybe his suggestion that he would start a war with Iran if somebody flipped America the bird, that may be just a lie? Well, good. I guess. Sorta. Kinda.

But not only is it trivial to point out similar examples among other people (remember Brian Williams’s Iraq helicopter story?), but you offer absolutely no reason why:
A) Clinton’s lies belong to the latter category rather than the former or
B) the latter category is somehow more important

Let’s be perfectly honest here - I’d much prefer a candidate who “instinctively lies about BS stuff” but is honest and on-point with their policy details over a candidate who constantly lies in self-aggrandizing ways about themselves, their plans, their opponents’ plans, and their policies.

And what’s more, the lies you cited can mostly be grouped into the former camp anyways - again, let’s go down the list:

  • Bosnian airport sniper fire. <- Obviously self-aggrandizement
  • Named after Sir Edmund Hillary. <- A story her mother told her that may or may not have been true and she didn’t fact-check
  • Husband not guilty, it was a vast right wing conspiracy. <- Self-aggrandizement, covering one’s own or one’s family’s ass, and I’m not entirely sure if this was a lie, given that the context is missing, and that there very much is a very real cottage industry dedicated to knocking the Clintons down a peg.
  • Turned down by the marines. <- Obvious self-aggrandizement. C’mon now, what else do you think the point of this statement is?
  • The Clintons were flat broke when they left the white house. <- ass-covering
  • Numerous documented email lies. <- ass-covering

None of these lies are any more compulsive or meaningless than Trump’s lie about, oh, say, the NFL sending him an email. They’re considerably less meaningless or compulsive than his lie about Saddam Hussein being really good at killing terrorists, or his lie about Putin being a better leader than Obama, or any number of other lies Trump made about bullshit topics.

And remember: you’re saying she needs to be called out above all other politicians. Not just that she should be called out for her lies, but that she should be given special scrutiny, and that she’s abnormally dishonest. Now, by all means, call her out on her lies; unlike the average Trump supporter, I care if my candidate lies, and will gladly hold her feet to the fire on these issues.

But she’s not the abnormal liar in this race. That’s Trump. She’s not the one who lies every five minutes in her stump speeches. That’s Trump. She’s not the one virtually every fact-checking organization has described as unprecedented. That’s Trump. She’s not the one who constantly and consistently lies about her policy details, whether she has policy details, what her plan is, and more. That’s Trump. She’s not the one for whom I can’t find a single policy proposal he hasn’t lied about or flip-flopped on in some substantial way. That’s still Trump.

Any claim you make about Clinton being a serial liar, any criteria you apply there, apply to Trump thousandfold. Wanna stick around and put that to the test?

This sort of partisan sniping would be a whole lot more meaningful if it had any relationship to reality. If you can’t see Trump for the greater liar, you might wanna step back from the bar. Buddy, newsflash: we vote. We are “normal Americans”. We’re just not your kind of “normal Americans”. Wonder why that is.

You mean, the polls that said that Trump would win?

Plus, Silver is the guy giving the Republicans the greatest chance. Hell, he went and did a presentation behind closed doors to the GOP here recently.

I’m disconcerted by this Huma Abedin thing, which I just heard about tonight for the first time. I would feel a lot better if Hillary would just fire her, say “I’m sorry if you weren’t really editing that publication and didn’t know what kinds of articles it was publishing, but this looks really bad and it doesn’t help to say you were claiming credit for work you didn’t do, even if people believed that.”

Just did - his first statement was about Trump’s white supporters, which is what I was responding to.

What other kind is there?

That’s snopes version of The Onion. Read more carefully.

I don’t think it is. That’s The Repository Of Lost Legends. This is in their normal election section.

Comment is superfluous.

No, you havent. Sure, all Politicos are caught out once in a while, Clinton among them, no doubt. But you have not shown, even to a tiny bit, how “above all other politicians” . And, there’s no “proof”.:rolleyes: At all.

Clinton could be more transparent?

Of the two candidates, which has released actual medical records?

Of the two candidates, which has released their tax returns?

It constantly baffles me how Trump is a serial liar and con man, with shady dealings and Russian contracts and questionable businesses going back decades; but *Clinton *is the one who needs to be more transparent.

This just in:
Bill forced to go on campaign trail to avoid answering “does this pantsuit make my ass look big?”

Because she isn’t trustworthy! Trump is a lying sack and totally upfront about it! That is a refreshing honesty that Hillary can’t match!

If Trump loses, he will still have a database of people who are totally gullible and will believe that you are a Nigerian prince. That will be worth $ billions!

People are confusing necessity with sufficiency. A high fact-checker rating isn’t sufficient to prove honesty, but it is necessary to establish it. That is to say, Hillary’s high Politifact rating doesn’t mean that she’s honest, but Trump’s low Politifact rating definitely proves that he is not.

Since when has that ever stopped us before?

Even there though it’s not sufficient to just use the ratings. Check out Joe Biden’s “Pants on fire” statements. Now Joe Biden is one of the guys I’d think we’d all agree is a good example of honest but often very careless, but Politifact has really screwed him a couple of times, giving him a “Pants on fire” rating for saying GWB was “brain dead”. Why Politifact would even rate such a statement is beyond me.

He also got a Pants on Fire rating for exaggerating the effects of a sneeze on an aircraft and for his personal judgment of Rudy Giuliani’s experience. I’d actually say he doesn’t deserve any of those Pants on Fire ratings.

Looks like they were bored and trolling.

Possibly, but another thing they’d have to do if they wanted to rate candidates on overall honesty is determine when their half true statements are intended to be half true. The best liars don’t say things that are obviously untrue, they lie to you with half truths and sometimes even actual truths taken out of their proper context.

Neither candidate is a particularly good liar, so this isn’t really applicable, but I imagine we’ll encounter one of these experts some day.

What Trump lacks in quality, he makes up for in sheer volume.