That seems to be the argument put forth by Steve Landsburg in Obama Did Not Lie. He sets up a hypothetical situation in which a spouse when questioned about an illogical plan she proposed gives an absurd response. Then there's this:
Actually, of course, your spouse knows perfectly well that you won’t be taking a rocket ship. So: Have you just been lied to? It seems to me that you clearly haven’t been. A lie requires an intent to deceive. You have, perhaps, been treated with contempt, and that can be just as unpleasant as a lie. But it’s not a lie. In order to lie, you’ve got to have some chance of being believed.
When President Obama said that he could provide health care to millions without taking any health care away from people who have already got it, he had no chance of being believed. The statement was absurd on its face. This is a law of arithmetic: If you invite a bunch of friends to share your lunch, there’s going to be less lunch for you. Everybody understands that.
Problem here is that there was an intent to deceive and most people did believe him. Few had enough knowledge about it to know not to believe him, and skeptics were ridiculed. Besides, lawmakers had to pass the law to see what was in it.
Via Don Boudreaux who explains:
On matters of basic economics large numbers of Americans are more like two-year-old children than like adults. They believe that there is such thing as free lunches if government promises to deliver such meals. They believe this absurdity in no small part because eloquent, powerful, well-dressed, and finely titled men and women repeatedly say it’s so and because no one suffers any direct, personal consequences from believing such fantastical stories or even for voting for the story-tellers.
Obama lied. Period.
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