3 ms·

It's partially an educational problem. I'm old enough to have been taught an idealized version of U.S. history in school. We learned things like how George Wa

It's partially an educational problem. I'm old enough to have been taught an idealized version of U.S. history in school. We learned things like how George Washington chopped down his father's cherry tree, but when his father asked him if he had done it, he "could not tell a lie." There was Honest Abe, who, as a child, walked 5 miles to return 2 cents that had been given to him as change in error. Now, maybe this stuff wasn't all historically true, but in a sense it was better than true. It set an expectation for an ideal President. Serious dishonesty was taught as being disqualifying for the office of President, and honesty was taught as the deepest American value. Even if, in reality, prior Presidents hadn't always been honest, it created a tendency for voters to strongly prefer honest appearing candidates. Nixon's resignation was maybe the strongest affirmation of this principle that ever happened. I think it was with Clinton that this broke, and people started not to care too much about honesty and exclusively focus on their own perceived interests. Certainly the media environment, economic conditions, and the decline of mainline Protestantism had something to do with it too.

sitkack 2y ago
You are right about everything except it goes back to Nixon.
radley 2y ago
> I think it was with Clinton that this broke, and people started not to care too much about honesty and exclusively focus on their own perceived interests. Or, more likely, when Fox News was launched (1996) during his tenure.
- cameldrv 2y ago
  Well yes, it's complicated. That's part of what I meant by the "media environment." In the post-war period, broadcast media was mostly dominant, but it was both regulated and subject to the fairness doctrine, but also limited. There were only a few channels per metro area. News was only on an hour or two per day, and it wasn't that popular, so it lost money, but it was required by law as public interest programming in order to retain the FCC broadcast license. The lower production costs, higher reach, and nonexistent regulation of wide bandwidth cable TV created the space for Fox, and then also to a lesser extent, MSNBC. In my opinion, the distorted information propagated by these outlets had a synergistic effect with the changes in the emphasis of the educational system in the late 80s-early 90s to deemphasize honesty as a core American value.

sitkack 2y ago

You are right about everything except it goes back to Nixon.

radley 2y ago

> I think it was with Clinton that this broke, and people started not to care too much about honesty and exclusively focus on their own perceived interests. Or, more likely, when Fox News was launched (1996) during his tenure.

cameldrv 2y ago
Well yes, it's complicated. That's part of what I meant by the "media environment." In the post-war period, broadcast media was mostly dominant, but it was both regulated and subject to the fairness doctrine, but also limited. There were only a few channels per metro area. News was only on an hour or two per day, and it wasn't that popular, so it lost money, but it was required by law as public interest programming in order to retain the FCC broadcast license. The lower production costs, higher reach, and nonexistent regulation of wide bandwidth cable TV created the space for Fox, and then also to a lesser extent, MSNBC. In my opinion, the distorted information propagated by these outlets had a synergistic effect with the changes in the emphasis of the educational system in the late 80s-early 90s to deemphasize honesty as a core American value.