All Presidents Lie.
In the transition from candidate to president-elect to new president to established president, crowd-pleasing, vote-getting promises are usually the first to go. Promises that had seemed baked into the cake suddenly become inspirational as in “We’re going to do our darndest, folks, but you know those (opposition party) in Congress are going to fight us every step of the way.” Bet the ranch on it, the promise in question is headed for oblivion. Remember the promise Obama made on the campaign trail to close Guantanamo on his first day in office? 
In a baffling departure from presidential custom, on his first day in office, he actually signed a Guantanamo-closing executive order. “This is me following through … on an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers…”
When Obama eventually understood who his real bosses were, the only thing that closed was the office set up to supervise the closing. His explanation for this policy failure: “Congress …would not let us close it.” (In Obama’s first two years, Democrats were the majority in both houses of Congress). A related disorder affecting incoming Presidents is policy amnesia — the president in question appears not to remember what he promised or to whom. The current President is the poster boy for this syndrome. Here’s Trump on the campaign trail in 2015 making a promise repeated endlessly— 
[I will] save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts.” On May 24, Trump’s Treasury Secretary unveiled Trump’s first budget proposal, “A New Foundation for American Greatness.” Forget massive tax cuts for the wealthy and a huge increase in the military budget, those prerequisites of empire remain unchanged from president to president in this era of endless profits, endless war. What puts him at the front of the line of presidential liars are the proposed $1.7 trillion cuts in Medicaid, and Social Security Disability. An unremembered promise or a cold-blooded strategy to promise “them” anything to get elected?
Granted, the American voter usually winds up with a choice between the Republican liar or the Democratic liar, sometimes a third-party liar sticks his or her nose under the tent. But for today’s corporate media, mendacity is not a two-edged sword. It cuts one way —the Donald Trump way. Of the mendacity of his opponent, or previous occupants of the White House, you will hear nary a word. “Fairness and accuracy” in reporting has been replaced by overheated commentary, diatribes by paid “experts, debates between opposing partisans, “breaking news” reports of another Trump fiasco, and a plethora of evidence-free reports on the “Russian threat.” 
At this highly charged moment, don’t thinklegislators are sitting around, twiddling their thumbs. They’ve jumped into the fray with uncharacteristic vigor, Seven or eight committees in both houses are currently investigating all phases of the outrage, particularly Russian “interference” in the 2016 elections. Senators and Representatives are racing to the microphones to air their partisan positions on the “Russian affair.” More fun than taking action on America’s tattered, crumbling and decaying infrastructure. Other items not on the legislative bucket list: the U.S. desperately needs to join the rest of the world with a universal health care system. Manãna. No action on hunger, poverty, or homelessness in the richest country on the planet. Nero fiddles while U.S. prisons burst at the seams. Millions of students face a future of perpetual indebtedness. Legislative progress so far— a health care bill that isn’t going anywhere, a budget proposal that’s DOA in the Senate, two immigration orders struck down by the courts but a ton of activity from “outraged” lawmakers on the “Russian threat.”
While the pot is boiling in Washington, the media is showing “before” and “after” clips of candidate Trump’s expansive promises and their demise in the White Hose. One enterprising reporter even dug up a fifteen-year old interview where Trump appears to support the Iraq war. (In 2002, when asked if he supported the Iraq War, his answer: “Yeah, I guess so).
Anointing the current President the exception to the rule, the media spin runs like this: the promises a winning candidate makes in every stump speech on the campaign trail not their inevitable repudiation after winning, are hallmarks of his effectiveness as a leader. To prove (or disprove) that theory, let’s follow the bread crumbs past presidents have laid down to find out if President Trump is the outlier on fulfilling campaign promises. Or is the “forked tongue” syndrome a trade-mark presidential malady along with disastrous foreign policy adventures. Most of our early twentieth century Presidents had an advantage denied to current ones. Without rapid-fire communication tools, smart phones, and the internet, presidents with a tin ear in the promises-keeping department managed to emerge unscathed from even the most outrageous public deceptions. You might be surprised to learn how lying has become a presidential art-form.
Let’s start with the great deluder himself, Woodrow Wilson, who came to believe that the best way to “make the world safe for democracy” was to make war. To be prepared Wilson assembled a 5-million-man armed force —116,518 of them were later to die in World War I. How does that square with the promise he made in 1914 “the US must be neutral in fact as well as in name?” His re-election campaign made much of that 1914 promise hailing him as the president who “kept us out of war.” Less than six months into his second term, he presented Congress with a declaration of war.
Candidate Trump: I’m going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to negotiate the terms of that agreement [NAFTA]…And if they don’t agree…America intends to withdraw from that deal.” President Trump: (White House statement 4/26/17) “President Trump agreed not to terminate NAFTA at this time.”
Fast forward twenty years to President Roosevelt, another inveterate promise-breaker. He was much more successful at wooing the public than the colorless Wilson. In 1940, facing a re-election challenge, his pronouncements followed the pattern of all presidents who intend to go to war but need to be against it before they are for it. “I have said and I shall say it again and again and again your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” As election time approached, his denials became more fervent. On 11/3/1940, two days before the election, “The first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war.” The distant early warning signal of a flip-flop occurred on May 25, 1941 “The war is approaching the brink of the western hemisphere itself. It is coming very close to our home. One day after Pearl Harbor, FDR went to Congress “I ask that Congress declare that…a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.”
Obama on the needs and benefits of off-shore drilling vs. renewables: In his first Inauguration speech on 1/20/09, he made a valiant attempt to solidify his bona fides as the ‘energy president:’ “We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” Before the environmental hurrahs had faded, Obama green-lighted offshore drilling in the Gulf, accompanied by this grandiose statement: “It turns out…that oil rigs today don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.” Who Knew? 18 days later (on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day) the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded killing 11 workers and created the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
President Kennedy, in office just shy of two years, nonetheless managed to do the familiar Presidential two-step when it came to U.S. war-fever, this time in Vietnam. Unlike the two earlier presidents who had promised not to make war only to turn to war when the opportunity arose, Kennedy went the other way. In his Inauguration speech, he made war one of the options on the table, promising to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend…to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Two years later, his thinking “evolved” — “The United States will never start a war. We do not now expect a war…We shall do our part to build a world of peace…”
Candidate Trump on the future of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization): “It is obsolete, it’s old, it’s fat, it’s sloppy.” President Trump on May 27, 2017, “We’re behind NATO all the way.”
President Johnson, a self-described “accidental” president, knew his administration was teetering on the edge of disaster in Vietnam. Running for President against the inveterate hawk Barry Goldwater, candidate Johnson, on 10/21/64, promised the American people 
“We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away…to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves…” It worked, he crushed Goldwater. Now it was time to start fulfilling promises —the ones he made to his home boys, the military-industrial complex —which happened 10 months later on July 28, 1965, in this nationwide televised address “I have today ordered to Vietnam [certain forces] which will raise our fighting strength…to 125,000…Additional forces will be needed later and they will be sent as requested.”
Obama – Broken Promise
Walk with picketers when collective bargaining rights are threatened
“If American workers are being denied their right to organize when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes and I will walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States”
Obama put on his “aren’t unions grand” persona during the campaign. Shortly after declaring his candidacy, Obama made his “heartfelt” pledge to the laboring masses “If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain…I’ll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.” Long before that, in 2005, relying on the public’s short memory, he delivered this whopper “At a time of such insecurity…there has never been a greater need for a strong labor movement.” President Obama’s ardor for the laboring masses had cooled considerably by the time Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker tried to curtail public employees’ bargaining rights (successfully as it turned out) “I think everybody’s got to make some adjustments…” Several days later, his press secretary Jay Carney did the heavy lifting rolling back his promise “…he made his viewpoints known on the situation in Wisconsin, the need of people to come together.” So much for sneaker negotiations.
President Trump’s bifurcated opinions on the Pope deserve a moment in the sun. Shortly after Pope Francis delivered his bombshell appraisal of the man called Trump “a person who thinks only about building walls… and not of bridges is not a Christian”, Trump came right back at him “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.” Ho-hum. What goes around, comes around, making a one-eighty, Trump emerged from his May 24 meeting with the Pope crowing “fantastic meeting…he is something.”
What does it mean? That virtually all presidents are liars, faithful only to the demands of their major funders, the real powers in Washington. That’s old news. A more serious problem is the selectivity of the major (and minor) deliverers of the news. More and more, straight news coverage has been sacrificed to the “spin” of “experts” who not only deliver the news but tell us how to think about it. [for more, see “America Gets Her Grouch On (Again)” here] In the case of President Trump, the descent into full-blown hysteria has been complete. Blabbing about his unfitness for the job, his possible impeachment (a distant possibility), his traitorous (not exactly but close) behavior for “colluding” (in the absence of evidence) with the Russians have become daily fare on all media outlets. In a huge surrender, corporate media has chosen fat profits over what James Madison, one of the authors of the U.S. Constitution, considered the finest hour of the press —“critical, independent thinking and investigative journalism” — so vital to the survival of the Republic that it appears in the first amendment. Shouldn’t today’s journalists be held to the same standard?
