"You lie!"

Thirteen months ago, as the President of the United States was making a speech to a joint session of Congress, one of the Congressmen shouted out "You lie!" I am deliberately not mentioning the name of the President, or of the Congressman, or the subject or context. I believe all those things distract from what is truly interesting about this incident.

The moment was replayed over and over again on countless newscasts. Since it was a Presidential speech to a joint session of Congress, the camera was focused on the President, with the Speaker of the House (who happened to be from the same party as the President) seated behind the President, visible in the same camera shot. Perhaps the most commented-on aspect of the video replay was the look on the face of the Speaker of the House -- more dramatic than the look on the face of the President.

The incident generated a sort of frenzy in the media, with much discussion. It was reported that there was a significant increase in donations to both the involved Congressman and his opponent in the next election. Eventually there were official congressional proceedings against the Congressman, and he received some sort of official reprimand.

The entire issue was very emotional, though there is room for debate about how much was genuine emotion and how much was contrived. The Congressman who shouted out "You lie!" MAY have been overcome with emotion at that moment, or he may have been planning his outburst for weeks. All that followed MAY have been motivated by genuine outrage, or it may have been the product of cold political calculation.

For me, the biggest revelation of the entire incident was that Congress has specific rules against saying "You lie!" to the President, as well as against making various similar statements. This raises a number of obvious questions regarding the subject of what, if anything, a Congressman is allowed to say or do if a President lies. Perhaps the rules are meant to acknowledge that the President of the United States is somehow incapable of lying.

For me, the most interesting aspect of all that followed the incident was that there was little public discussion of the question of whether or not the President had been lying just prior to the moment when the Congressman shouted the words. Certainly it can be argued that since Congress has rules against a Congressman shouting "You lie!" at the President, and the Congressman shouted "You lie!" at the President, he broke the rules, and any discussion of whether or not the President was lying is irrelevant. Still, I would have thought that if there is any sort of objectivity or intellectual curiosity in our society, the question would have been debated in the media.

I must acknowledge that I DID hear the question raised ONCE on a news program. A person defending the President stated that at the moment in question, the President was speaking purely hypothetically, about something that existed only in his own mind, and therefore the Congressman could not absolutely state that he was lying, since the President was not speaking about anything real. This defense is interesting, but problematic on various levels given the specifics of what he was saying, and also the follow-up actions on the part of his supporters.

I would also have enjoyed hearing some debate about whether Congress should continue to have rules against saying "You lie!" to the President. The question MUST have come up, but I never heard it raised. Most of the debate that I heard was with regard to what actions should be taken following the statement -- how much apologizing should be done, and to whom, and how much punishment should be meted out. Perhaps these questions were necessary, but I could not help viewing them as simply deliberate distractions from the questions that should have been addressed.