When Havel was inaugurated as president of Czechoslovakia in 1990, he said, “I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you.’’ Yet a certain dissembling is built into the human condition, and leaders everywhere — including Havel — have always maneuvered in the uncertain space between appearances and reality. Though an exemplary president, he too was inevitably drawn into the compromises and calculations that define politics (supporting George W. Bush’s deceitful invasion of Iraq, for example, at a time when the Czech Republic had to prove itself in NATO).
Grave social dysfunction follows when “ritual signs’’ take on more importance than hard facts, and “pseudo-reality’’ begins to rule. It’s an intriguing coincidence that the Czech truth-teller’s funeral occurred on the day Republicans voted in Iowa. Lies are at issue as the GOP contest moves to New Hampshire tomorrow, with Newt Gingrich openly calling Mitt Romney a liar. But the entire Republican campaign gyres around ritual signs that are at odds with reality. Marginal extremists have forced the Republican mainstream to live within lies (blatant climate denial, the baseless assertions that the budget can be balanced without taxes, blind hatred of government, and so on). This represents a new low standard for political pseudo-reality. If Newt Gingrich is the guardian of truth, the nation is in real trouble.
But a liberal Democrat must admit that President Obama invokes ritual signs at odds with reality, too. His allies cut him a succession of breaks, most notably on his misbegotten Afghan war; the pretense that conditions are improving there is the tribute reality pays to realpolitik.
