What if politicians were forced, by law, to tell the truth? Wouldn't it be fun to find out

With his supposed stiff-upper-lip line “I cannot tell a lie,” a young George Washington confessed to dismembering a valued cherry tree. Honesty seems to have peaked early in American politics.

It’s been all downhill from there, and not just recently, either. You name it, a politician has said it. I did not have sex with that woman. Read my lips, no new taxes. I will not send your boys to any foreign wars.

Moreover, politics is the only profession in which its practitioners cannot be held accountable for their untruths. If you lie on your taxes you will be punished; just ask Al Capone. Lying about your company will land you in jail; just ask Elizabeth Holmes. Lying about stock trades will earn you a trip to the calaboose; just ask Martha Stewart.

Politicians, not so much. Joe Biden likes to tell heartwarming personal anecdotes that sound like Aesop on some sort of hallucinatory mushroom. Bill Clinton’s lies earned him the name Slick Willy.

But now, in one little corner of the world, the free pass may be over: “Members of the Welsh parliament are intent on tackling this age-old problem by bringing in legislation that bans politicians from telling untruths,” reports The Guardian. “If the law comes into force, Wales would be the first country in the world to make lying by politicians a criminal offense.”

Cool. But if that law were to be applied to the U.S., there wouldn't be anyone left in the halls of Congress to govern — which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on your worldview.

It’s kind of nice, I guess, to know that political lying is a problem in the rest of the world, too. It’s not just us. Although really, what is there in Wales  to lie about, the military prowess of Owain Glyndŵr?

Wales seems to be a country that handles itself pretty well. At least you don’t hear a lot about students there overrunning college campuses or school classrooms getting shot with semi-automatic weapons, or their hallowed government halls getting overrun by psychos. So what’s up?

“There’s always been something of a credibility gap in politics but that’s become a gaping chasm,” said former government leader Adam Price. “We’re trying to restore what should be a basic principle: that politicians should never deliberately set out to deceive. Hopefully it will set the precedent that could be adopted across democracies around the world.”

I thought so. This is about you-know-who. This is Wales casting a furrowed brow in the direction of MAGA and saying, “Don’t try that in a Welsh town.”

What changed? Not so much the lying itself as the nature of the lie. Political lies used to exist in a gray area where there was at least some small thread of plausibility. They used to be fun, told with a wink, almost — going right up to the line but not crossing over.

As a presidential candidate, Bob Dole promised to cut taxes, spend more money on government programs and balance the budget. When a reporter asked how that was supposed to work, Dole deadpanned “It will be difficult.”

But more, the public was under no obligation to believe political lies. Al Gore invented the internet? Fine, whatever.

The new Trump-Santos-Stafanik breed of lying is a hard, cold “sun rises in the west” complete reversal of fact, and then if you don’t believe it, they will send someone out to poison your dog.

They’ve given lying a bad name.

Really, you want to fix government, this is the way to do it. Throw the liars in jail, in a cell right next to Sam Bankman-Fried.

I want to tell you that the Welsh movement will catch fire, that all democracies, including ours, will enforce the truth in the promise of a bright new American tomorrow.

But that would be a lie.

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Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Wales explores forcing politicians to get honest with the public