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

“I’ve never read a better explanation of why presidents lie.”—John W. Dean, former counsel to President Nixon, The Washington Monthly

By the end of the twentieth century, after decades of demoralizing revelations about the mendacity of their elected officials, most Americans had come to accept the fact that deception was not only an accepted practice in government but also pervasive. Whatever the reasons proposed to justify falsehoods—practicality, expediency, extraordinary conditions of w...