A LOCAL councillor who spent the general election campaign extolling the virtues of honesty and branding the Prime Minister a liar was caught speeding. She persuaded her daughter to say that she was driving. Shouldn’t she be exposed as a hypocrite?
Someone should tell your errant councillor about a bargain that Adlai Stevenson offered to his political opponents during the 1952 American presidential election campaign. He promised that if they stopped “telling falsehoods about us, I will stop telling the truth about them”.
A politician calling another politician a liar is always a shamelessly entertaining spectacle. It’s like William Hague calling Iain Duncan Smith “baldy”; or Neil Kinnock accusing someone of being “verbose, prolix, repetitive, long-winded and mighty wordy to boot, as well”.
Here is one of life’s cuter paradoxes: many men and women stand for public office because they believe they can make their country a better place. These same men and women often also believe they have such an overwhelming duty to fulfil this calling that they may use whatever means necessary to achieve electoral success, however indecent or underhand: these may include lying about a rival, or bugging the Watergate building to spy on your Democrat opponents.
Yes, your councillor is a hypocrite. One rider, though: should she not be judged by the same yardstick as those she represents? The ruse she used to avoid a driving ban has apparently become commonplace now that even those with clean licences are accumulating penalties.
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On the other hand, it can’t have been her first such offence. She may argue that she has only been speeding, the better to execute her public duties. The point is: can you believe her?
FACING A DILEMMA?
Have you dilemmas of your own? Write to: Modern Morals, Times Features, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. E-mail: modernmorals@thetimes.co.uk.