POW: John Mearsheimer

John Mearsheimer led a discussion promoting his new book, courtesy of the Cato Institute. He discusses why leaders lie, fib, prevaricate and otherwise answer other then truthfully. He describes how lying tends to correlate with trust: Governments lie to their own citizens much more then they lie to each other, and democratic governments lie more often then non-democratic ones. Lying over wars of choice gets particular attention, with contrasting views of Bush and FDR (crafty enough that he didn’t need to lie).

Interesting and timely material.