Much has been made during this presidential campaign about Hillary Clinton's honesty, or perceived lack of it. In a recent CNN/ORC poll 50% of voters said Donald Trump was "more honest and trustworthy," while only 35% said the same of Clinton. This has been an ongoing theme for decades, as the right has consistently tried to paint Hillary Clinton as a nefarious liar, etc. But does it jibe with facts? Not really.
The website PolitiFact has built its reputation by tracking and fact-checking statements made by politicians. They have compared Clinton's and Trump's records for honesty, and the results are interesting. To wit:
As you can see, despite public opinion, the facts show that Hillary Clinton, while hardly a paragon of honesty, is far more honest than Donald Trump. Fully 70% of Trump's statements have been rated as Mostly False, False, or Pants on Fire by PolitiFact, while only 28% of Clinton's statements have been similarly rated. In other words, most of what comes out of Trump's mouth are lies. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is (believe it or not) slightly more honest than the average politician. (Gary Johnson, who has far fewer statements, has also been tracked by PolitiFact; his "honesty factor" is close to Clinton's, but he has no "Pants on Fire" statements at all.)
So why the disparity? Part of it is simple spin. Conservatives have been gunning for Hillary Clinton since she first appeared on the public stage 25 years ago. But mostly it is a side effect of the general polarization of American politics. We have coalesced into two opposing camps of US and THEM. Most people get their news from sources with which they are already in ideological agreement; in other words, people only hear what they want to hear. As Andy Borowitz put it, Earth is endangered by a new strain of fact-resistant humans.
There has been a great deal of discussion about having real-time fact checking at the presidential debates. Frankly I can't understand why they wouldn't have it. But neither side seems too keen on the idea, so it probably won't happen. Pity. You know, some of you younglings might not remember this, but there used to be a time when the press not only told you what a politician said, they also told you whether it was true.
I know — crazy, right?