Where lies are rewarded, politicians will tell them

That the minister lied isn’t in dispute. What’s less clear is why he would tell a lie so easily proven and so damaging to his reputation when proven it was.

One possibility: Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan sits somewhere on the continuum of a pathological liar, compelled to tell tales of military feats more illustrious than reality could confirm. Another possibility: he sits somewhere on the continuum of an idiot, unaware that lying even has consequences.

Possible, but so unlikely as to be absurd. He has no known record of compulsive deception; rather, he has a record of intelligent decisionmaking.

There’s a third explanation though, one having perhaps less to do with the man who lied than the context in which the lie was told.

Where lies are rewarded in politics, politicians will tell them.

I’m not referring here to the lies normally associated with running for and holding public office. The denials of wrongdoing when they have done wrong, the making of promises that they intend to break — these are nothing like the minister’s lie.

He once had some success; then he overstated it. He exaggerated.

But though his Liberal colleagues didn’t make him exaggerate, he had little reason to think they would discourage him. In a government where everything is considered awesome, half-measures of awesomeness aren’t sufficient. Embellishment is on-message.

Canada has elected a high-five as a government. One’s initiatives cannot merely be sound; they must be “inspiring.” One’s colleagues cannot merely be capable; they must be “incredible.” Even the office interns are, by one minister’s account, “amazing”; by another minister’s telling, the latest teen actress to play Anne of Green Gables is the same.

Each of these statements is necessarily punctuated with an exclamation mark! No policy is too small for a major proclamation, no minion too lowly for a superlative.

The minister overstepped this line only by employing a more dramatic noun than was strictly necessary, rather than a more colourful adjective. Where his colleagues might have described his accomplishments as phenomenal(!) rather than simply admirable, he described himself as the architect of a battle rather than just a driving force.

The effect is essentially the same. When better is not only possible but also necessary, good enough is never good enough.

It can’t seriously be in question that the government has made exaggeration a brand strategy. And just like the minister’s boast, the government’s self-aggrandizements are partly in reply to a political moment that demands them.

Narcissism would be anathema to populism if populism were actually what it claims to be: the will of ordinary people left to its own devices. But populists need a leader, and though you need not be a narcissist to claim to speak for the people rather than just to govern people pretty well, you should be able to act like one.

If populism stands someone on a soapbox and invites the crowd to adore him, to earn their adoration he must offer himself up as an aspirational figure. A tremendous billionaire! The world’s leading feminist ladies’ man! A genius military strategist! Whoever he is, he must look better than he is.

Don’t misunderstand. If populism has to leave its mark on even the centre of Canadian politics, better that it’s populism-lite, and a nontoxic version at that. And it’s not as though grandstanding is traditionally a stranger to politics.

We’re living in exaggerated times, though. Uncommonly polarized, increasingly disdainful of civility, openly hostile to knowledge and truth.

The biggest surprise about this lie is that anyone cared.