Why Do Politicians Exaggerate? President Trump's Signing Speech

Donald Trump, WH photo

I wrote yesterday about Nancy Pelosi's speech against the tax reform bill. She badly overstated her case. President Donald Trump has now signed the bill into law and, lo and behold, he badly overstated the law's benefits. Why do politicians exaggerate?

When signing the law at a White House ceremony, Mr. Trump said:

As you know, $3.2 trillion in tax cuts for American families, including the doubling of the standard deduction and the doubling of the Child Tax Credit. The typical family of four earning $75,000 will see an income tax cut of more than $2,000 — many much higher than that — slashing their tax bill in half. And they’re going to start to see that.

This was quite misleading. Expert analysis shows that the total tax cuts are indeed huge, but the law also raises revenue in other ways (for example, by eliminating personal exemptions) taxes, so the net tax cut is more like $1.5 trillion. That is still a great deal of money, and Mr. Trump did not need to overstate his case. By exaggerating, he puffs up his accomplishments for true believers, but reduces his credibility among people who look into the facts. 

Later in his speech, Mr. Trump repeated a ridiculous claim that he has made several times:

And the bottom line is, this is the biggest tax cuts and reform in the history of our country. This is bigger than, actually, President Reagan’s many years ago. I’m very honored by it.

Reagan's tax cuts were certainly much bigger.  Yet, this is still a huge tax cut, so why would Mr. Trump misrepresent it, thus reducing his long-term credibility?

That is a hard question to answer. Obviously, there are people who speak truthfully, and yet they rarely seem to make their way to high political office. Those who do are often ridiculed, or even perceived to be weak. Most elections are decided by voter turnout, not by convincing people to change their minds, so people who advocate a particular viewpoint often have an advantage over people who speak circumspectly. Many people build careers by under-promising and over-delivering. Politicians seem to build their careers by over-promising and under-delivering. Too bad! Still, the public can, and should, be alert when politicians say things that cannot possibly be true.

A note about fact-checking. Not all voters want to know the truth. Many are happy to live in an ideological dream world. However, for those people who want to know the truth about political issues, the leading fact-checking websites are FactCheck.org, operated by the Annenberg School of Communication, the Washington Post's Fact Checker, and Pulitizer-Prize winner PolitiFact.com. USA Today, CNN, and AP both operate good fact-checking operations, but they are less complete than the ones I recommend. Fox News' fact-checking is usually OK as far as it goes, but they seem to have developed the habit of fact-checking Democrats but not Republicans, which can give the reader an unbalanced impression.

Not everyone who claims to check facts actually does so. Reader beware!