With Bill Clinton’s brazen and factually challenged defense of his wife’s heroics in Tuzla, many people are noting the former POTUS’s frequent estrangement from the truth and wondering precisely what it is that makes Clinton lie. If I could successfully psychoanalyze Bill Clinton, I would go to Stockholm tomorrow and pick up my prize. But I do have one small memory of Clinton fibbing that I think sheds some light on his need to deceive. Mind you, I’m going from memory here, and a decade old memory at that, so if I botch any of the details, please cut me some slack. But the gist of what I’m about to report is entirely accurate. In the late 1990’s, VH1 ran one of its “Behind the Music” episodes on Carly Simon. Because Simon was apparently a Friend of Bill, the show interviewed Clinton and asked him for his thoughts on the singer. Clinton recounted an anecdote from a White House holiday party that Simon attended. The host, his adoring wife and their gathered guests were singing Christmas Carols. According to his version of the story that he recounted for VH1’s cameras, the president sang the carols, but in an off key manner. And you know what really struck Bill Clinton about Carly Simon? That she didn’t say anything to him about how poorly he was singing, and instead suffered his warbling in silence. He was specifically struck how, even though she was a great singer and he a poor one, she didn’t insist that he stop singing. To be blunt, what a pile of rubbish. First of all, what kind of person would upbraid another person for singing Christmas Carols poorly? Second, did Bill Clinton, then the President of the United States, really think that Carly Simon would have audacity to call him out for singing poorly while a guest in the White House? Could he possibly have been truly impressed by her alleged restraint on this occasion? This, my friends, is pathological lying in action. It was like he couldn’t help himself. Clinton could have offered an innocuous reminiscence about how much he liked Carly Simon, but instead he spun a crazy tale that was entirely implausible. What was particularly strange about Clinton’s testimonial was that lying about something so trivial came naturally, like saying something truthful never even entered his mind as a possibility. That’s the way it’s always been with Bill Clinton. When a lie serves better than the truth, Bill Clinton unfailingly goes with the lie. It’s nice that the media finally has become savvy to this fact. It would have been even nicer if they picked up on it some 16 years ago.
