Because they wants to win. Think about it.

Yes, but once they've won the election, they continue to lie. What do you suppose is the motive?

Because it's almost impossible to punish them for doing so. Voters have short memories, and in America at least politicians have things so rigged in their favor that the House of Representatives is practically a House of Lords.

Another note on this subject. I remember from my college days being taught that Democracy is a flawed system. The main reason it is flawed, is that the majority can impose its will upon the minority. If 51% of the people love a candidate, and the other 49% think they are the antichrist, they will have to live with their antichrist. If a majority of the people think that it is immoral to drink alcohol, the minority gets to live with prohibition. Given this flawed system, It is very easy for a politician to fall into trying to "appease" different factions, and let their promises go by the wayside. ======================================== ORIGINAL POST BELOW I thought as a former "politician," I might be able to provide a serious answer to this question. First of all, I'm not sure that a blanket statement like "politicians lie" is fair to make. I don't believe that politicians lie any more than any other people in positions of power. The difference, is that politicians are held accountable for their statements in a way that other people in power seldom are. Now, on to my past experience in politics. When I was in college, I ran successfully for the student senate. At my school, senators oversee the budget of the Student Activities Fund. This fund was over 1.6 million dollars in 1990 when I graduated. The senate passes a budget, takes requests for funding from clubs and student centers, and provides general oversight of the employees of the Student Activities Center. Once I was a senator, I ran for a position on the Budget & Finance committee, and ultimately ended up as chairman of the committee. One of the things I learned from that experience, is that sometimes you must break a promise to your constituents in the interest of "getting the job done." My committe had seven members, who were responsible for writing and presenting the budget to the full senate. Passage of the budget within the committee required a simple majority. A quorum in my committe was five people, so the budget could actually be passed (or blocked!) by three people if every member was not present. When I campaigned for my seat, I promised the voters that I would work to stop spending Student Activity Fund monies on frivolous things such as Student Center parties. Two members of my committee were members of the Veterans Center and two were members of the Black Student Center. The four of them teamed up to block passage of the budget within the committee unless they got their end of year party. It still burns me to this day, that we spent over $20,000 for those students to have their parties, so I could get the budget passed within the committee. The consequence of not passing the budget would have been closure of Student Centers and layoffs of Student Activities employees. Although I am not suggesting that politicians always have an excuse such as this when they tell a lie, maybe there is some other circumstance that you are not aware of. By the way, why didn't you say "Why do Presidents of large companies lie?" When they do, it has just as much (or more!) effect on the public as when politicians are dishonest - think Kenneth Lay and Enron.

Because they have convinced themselves that what they think to be right is right. In short, they would not recognise the truth if it stood up and bit them!

I'm with ptrask on this one. I've never been a politician, but I know a couple and have heard the inside stories of their efforts to do what they promised while elected. It's harder than it sounds. While I'm sure politicians may say things to influence votes, the majority of their promises are more like goals. The problem with having a goal is that once you actually go about figuring out what has to be done to achieve that goal, you often learn that the goal isn't as practical, or possible as you originally thought. So you have to make compromises. This is where the trouble begins. Which is worse - fulfilling a promise that required a bad compromise to achieve it, or shelving the promise until conditions make it plausible? I figure a politician would be nervous that letting their constituents down (even though it's for a good reason) might piss them off - so they might be tempted to just tell them what they want to hear and hope the fallout isn't too bad. You know how people get when they don't get what they were promised. I venture that even if you told them the truth, there would always be a vocal minority who overlook the reasons and focus on the broken promise. Anyway - I'm rambling. Nobody could know what it's like until they have to deal with it themselves. Here's a good analogy......... as a parent, have you ever lied to your kids? I bet you had a good reason......

ptrask, You were obviously one of the minority. Why could you not have the committee members who were blackmailing the committee removed. If our government is of the people, by the people, for the people and the majority of the people wanted the parties that would be the people's choice. When someone is elected to a position their responsibility to uphold the purpose of the governmental entity should continue to be under scrutiny. They should be accountable all along the way not just during elections. It seems in our system that when someone gets elected that's the end of it and they can do whatever they want to do as long as their term lasts. Is the problem that we, the people, do not stay in touch with our representatives enough to make sure that they keep in mind what we elected them to do? I agree with Auntie Em, someone may honestly start out to make a difference but power and money have always and will always corrupt. Absolute power absolutely corrupts, look at the Supreme Court if you doubt that.

Politcians get carried away by politics to the point that will say whatever they think can get them the votes.

Politicians lie because we (their constituency) make them lie. There are certain things I want. There are certain other things you want. Sometimes these things come into conflict. A politician has to represent what you want AND what I want. But they can't represent conflicting wants. So they either lie to one of us, or compromise and lie to both of us. The more constituents, the bigger the lies. Hence why we think our presidents almost never tell the truth, but we think our city councilmen are okay. Also why we see great idealist men go into office and suddenly turn into our standard "Politician." In order for a politician to keep his job, we have to choose to let him keep his job. And we all know you can't make everybody happy all the time. But he has to say what he has to say to keep his job, and then deal with the consequences of not being able to make everybody happy all the time later. That..and some people think that it might have something to do with most politicians being lawyers... Lawyers lie a lot.

To really consider the question you first have to parse the word "lie". Often the charge of lying is levied for a mere difference of opinion or viewpoint, and in politics those are abundant. A lie is stating something you know at the time to be false. A broken promise (given in an example earlier) is different. I'm sure that promise was made at the time with every intent of keeping it, otherwise it would have been a lie. (I'm tempted to critique the decision to break the promise but that isn't the question here.) But yes, we have all seen politicians lie - state, sometimes emphatically, what they know for certain is false. Some lies are justifiable, intended to misdirect for good reason (during a war one could find many good examples). Some lies are intended to misdirect for personal reasons - to protect not others, but the politician personally. The politician's constituency is the arbiter of justifiable vs. non-justifiable lying. So the answer is: Politicians, if and when they lie, do so for the simple reason that they believe their constituents will accept it.

There does seem to be a certain amount of confusion here between breaking a promise and lying. Here are my thoughts on breaking promises; 1) Democracy is very demanding. The candidate promising the most might well win even though they have made promises that they are unable to keep. So democracy encourages them to make promises that they know they may be unable to keep just so they can win the election. 2) Circumstances change. For the lies it is generally more simple. They lie about past events to save their skin!

For the first Tuesday in November...They tell you what you want to hear to get votes

because, like the rest of us, they are only human!!

I don't think it's so much that politicians lie as that the best liars tend to become politicians. I'm not saying politicians are liars. I think, as ptrask pointed out, that many, if not most of them have grand ideas about what they will accomplish once they get into office, only to find that they have to make many compromises once they get there in order to get anything accomplished at all. But I saw a really interesting program about twenty years ago about a study done on the possible connection between the abiltiy to lie convincingly and the ability to lead groups. Random groups of people of differing personalities were chosen for the study. Each was put into a situation where they had to taste a really terrible tasting product and then look into the camera and say how great it tasted. Most had difficulty being convincing, but some were absolutey dead pan. After the taste test, they were all broken into groups to perform some task but they made sure that there was only one dead pan liar in each group. In virtually every case, the dead pan would sit back and observe for a while, then suddenly sit forward and take over. "All right! Here's what we're going to do...". From that point forward, the groups followed them. The study's conclusion was that there "appeared" to be a connection between the ability to lie well and the ability to lead. Of course, it wasn't very conclusive, because leading a group in a small, short term project is not really the same as a life in politics where long-term relationships have to be maintained. Still, it was interesting and gave pause for thought.

I find humor in the following and I quote. "Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy." "If honesty was suddenly introduced into American life, the entire system would collapse." -George Carlin justforpun.com

i think politicians lie to avoid a world wide panic i mean if we really knew some of what really goes on in iraq people would start to panic and what about the world trade center do you really think they told us everything but it is better not to know everything in the long run for instance did you know... 1) New York City has 11 letters 2) Afghanistan has 11 letters. 3) Ramsin Yusef (The terrorist who threatened to destroy the Twin Towers in 1993) has 11 letters. 4) George W Bush has 11 letters. This could be a mere coincidence, but this gets more interesting: 1) New York is the 11th state. 2) The first plane crashing against the Twin Towers was flight number 11. 3) Flight 11 was carrying 92 passengers. 9 + 2 = 11 4) Flight 77 which also hit Twin Towers, was carrying 65 passengers. 6+5 = 11 5) The tragedy was on September 11, or 9/11 as it is now known. 9 + 1+ 1 = 11 6) The date is equal to the US emergency services telephone number 911. 9 + 1 + 1 = 11. Sheer coincidence..?! Read on and make up your own mind: 1) The total number of victims inside all the hi-jacked planes was 254. 2 + 5 + 4 = 11. 2) September 11 is day number 254 of the calendar year. Again 2 + 5 + 4 = 11. 3) The Madrid bombing took place on 3/11/2004. 3 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 4 = 11. 4) The tragedy of Madrid happened 911 days after the Twin Towers incident. Now this is where things get totally eerie: The most recognised symbol for the US, after the Stars & Stripes, is the Eagle. The following verse is taken from the Quran, the Islamic holy book: "For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced: for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah and there was peace." That verse is number 9.11 of the Quran. Still uncovinced about all of this..?! Try this and see how you feel afterwards, it made my hair stand on end: Open Microsoft Word and do the following: 1. Type in capitals Q33 NY. This is the flight number of the first plane to hit one of the Twin Towers. 2. Highlight the Q33 NY. 3. Change the font size to 48. 4. Change the actual font to the WINGDINGS What do you think now?!! Freaky Huh!!!!!!!!!!

Because politicians realized a long time ago that the people voting for them are real gullable. Politicians tell people what they want to hear.

EGO!

VOTES!!!! And lots of them!

ego

to see who was listening.

Not all of them do, but those who do, lie because the people around them don't question them.