Honesty is the Best Policy
By Eric Wittmershaus

Honesty is the best Policy

Sure, we've all heard the time-honored phrase, but never (at least not recently) has one man put that ancient maxim to the test like President Clinton. Indeed, our Arkansan Casanova has gotten into a good degree of trouble with his peers (though somewhat less with his constituency) for admitting to his affair with Monica Lewinski.

The problem with Clinton's honesty, however, is that it came about indirectly. Most of the problems facing the president stem from the fact that he lied and was found out. Thus, it's difficult to say whether his troubles have their roots in honesty or dishonesty. For the sake of the thesis, we'll posit that Clinton would be in none of the trouble he's in had he been honest from the get-go. True, while his standing in the international community would have been irreparably damaged, Americans care little about executive extracurriculars, as evidenced by a Gallup poll showing the president's job approval rating at a whopping 64 percent two days after the release of the Starr report.

So far, honesty's looking pretty good, but to determine whether it's the BEST policy, we need to pull back the curtain a little further and look at honesty in the context of its fellow policies.

If one thing is for certain, it's that DISHONESTY is a substantially more sketchy policy. Richard M. Nixon's parade of untruths surrounding Watergate won him few fans in his waning years (unless you count that library they give every former president) and cast a pall over his entire presidency. And Ronald Reagan's "failure to recollect" his role in the Iran-Contra affair has caused him to be looked upon in a considerably less favorable light than he was back in the day.

Clearly then, a policy of honesty triumphs over one of dishonesty, but what about other, less-obvious comparisons. Let's take, for instance, my life insurance policy.

In making this comparison, it is important to keep in mind that I am twenty-two years old, and life insurance is, considering the fact I am not likely to have the same provider when I die as I do today, essentially a waste of money.

To break it down a little further, my insurance agent, Aid Association for Lutherans (a holdover from my youth) collects $40 every quarter until I turn 25, after which it goes up (as does the amount paid out to my parents). If I die, my parents collect $40,000 ($55,000 if I die in an accident, woo-hah). In other words, my insurance provider reaps a profit of $480 over three years (probably more, given they invest the money, and Lutherans are notoriously shrewd investors), and in the highly unlikely event I die, they lose their investment, plus a bunch of others. Clearly, for me, as for most people, life insurance does little good. Indeed, it would be much wiser for me to invest this small sum of money in the stock market.

Due to the fact Flak hopes to attract a young, hip, media-and-politics-savvy audience, life insurance probably does you, a member of this niche, as much good as it does me. The same can be said for pretty much any form of insurance, given that disaster in the form of fire, theft, golf ball-sized hail, etc. has pretty much the same low propensity of occurrence. If, however, you find yourself saying, "Wait a minute; at my age, life insurance isn't such a bad idea," you might as well stop reading and follow this link:

http://www.poodles.com

Furthermore, if you find yourself saying, "Wait a minute; how do they know my demographic group, and how did they target it," perhaps it's time to rethink that subscription to "Swing Time."

Now we'll move on to another, more controversial policy: Appeasement. While this may sound like a particularly good policy for you and me:

Me: Excuse me, I need approximately $50,000 a year, so that I can write without having to be burdened by one of those gauche, secondary jobs held by philistines.

Government: Sure son, here you go.

It has been employed in the past with disastrous results. Take, for example, World War II.

On the eve of the war (September, 1939 to be more specific), Germany, Italy, England and France signed their names to what has become known as the Munich Pact. This pact, the Magna Carta of appeasement, ceded the territory of the Sudetenland, a traditionally German-speaking territory in Western Czechoslovakia, to the Germans, in exchange for a promise from Hitler not to attack the remainder of Czechoslovakia.

Once Hitler marched into the Sudetenland, it wasn't long before he continued into Czechoslovakia. Neither England nor France did anything to stop him. As we all know, Hitler didn't stop with the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia, but marched on to Poland, prompting England and France to declare war, beginning a conflict which stretched half a decade and cost billions of dollars and millions of lives; definitely not a sound policy.

Clearly, then, appeasement is a policy whose efficacy varies widely according to circumstance, so thus far, we have:

1. Honesty

2. Insurance

3. Dishonesty

?. Appeasement

Now we'll try to see where an economic policy fits into the picture. Surely you remember learning in school (for at that time, it was still required of school children to have some sense of history) about how, during the Great Depression, FDR (that great American hero who was righteous and honest about everything, except his disability) used deficit spending colorfully dressed up as "pump-priming" to pull the United States out of financial ruin.

While at the time, deficit spending seemed like a good idea, it ran amok in the 80s and has put our country in somewhat of a penny-pinching mode today, as we ran up a larger and larger (and what now seems insurmountable) debt. It is, of course, totally unnecessary to point out that almost every time an ordinary citizen goes for a whirl on the for-a-moment-exhilarating plastic rollercoaster known as deficit spending, he soon winds up leading a (very unpleasant) frugal existence.

Thus, deficit spending (a form of dishonesty when you think of it, for isn't it merely deluding oneself as to how much money one actually has?) while brilliant in the short term, isn't such a great policy in the long-term. Honesty, quite clearly, is still sitting in the catbird seat.

For our last comparison, we'll venture into the world of sports, the San Francisco '49ers football team, without indicating any preference for honesty, indicated Carmen wasn't the best Policy when it parted company with longtime team president in July. Though Policy officially resigned, it was widely reported by Sports Illustrated and various San Francisco news sources that Eddie DeBartolo, co-owner of the team, was aiming to get rid of Policy.

The reason? DeBartolo and co-owner/sister Denise York suspected Policy of trying to gain control of the team by using the decidedly less-than-honest tactic of pitting brother against sister.

This year, taken out from under Policy's wing for the first time since 1991, the team hasn't skipped a beat, starting the season with a smashing 6-2 record (after finishing 13-3 last season, losing to the Green Bay Packers in the playoffs). Perhaps Carmen was not such an essential Policy after all.

So where does that leave honesty?

Granted, this essay hasn't touched upon anywhere near all the policies available for argument, but, by choosing a representative sample (or at least a diverse one), I hope I've been able, at least, to persuade the casual observer that honesty is a DAMN FINE policy.

Of course, if you check back in a few years, I may hold different opinions on the subject. After all, it was aging popsters Depeche Mode (with whom many of us media savvy hipsters grew up) who intoned in their 1990 song, "Policy of Truth":

"You'll see your problems multiplied
If you continually decide
To faithfully pursue
The policy of truth"

and as they say, "With age comes wisdom."

E-mail Eric Wittmershaus at ericw at flakmag dot com.

— graphic by Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)