In the UK and some other countries it is not permissible to call a fellow member of the House a liar in the Houses of Parliament (or their equivalents). One might speak of a member’s dissembling ways, his lack of acquaintence with actuality, or his emphasis on material others might consider untruthful, but one may never use the L word.

I use this as a way of introducing the American approach to lies (and the Lying Liars who tell them). In the 2000 Presidential campaign Al Gore got spanked for the many things he said that could be construed as lies. Most famous was his claim to have invented the Internet. The press seized on this and many other examples as reasons why he couldn’t be trusted. Never mind that he didn’t make such a claim, nor that he wasn’t talking about something of particular significance (WMD anybody?): He nearly lied, and the public needs to know!

Now contrast this to Bush Jr’s interivew on NBC’s “Meet The Press”. In it he said:

If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton, discretionary spending was up 15 percent, and ours have steadily declined.

As explained here, that’s a lie. Not an interpretation, or a partisan view, or a biased choice of facts. It’s a lie. Under Clinton it went up modestly (about 3%), whereas under Bush it has risen a total of 31%. So not even a small lie. It’s a lie.

So the press is all over this, right? Well apart from the “Slate” link above, I haven’t found any mention of it outside of a few blogs. No, what’s exercising the press is whether Bush served fully in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, and whether Kerry’s anti-war protests after his service in Vietnam were reasonable or not. Two somewhat important issues, but sidebars to Bush lying. Nonetheless there was an extended piece on this issue on CNN last night, and more links than I care to Google for discussing. Meanwhile, the liar gets off.