Today, testifying under oath, C.I.A. director George Tenet said that during the month of August 2001, he did not visit Texas, which is where George W. Bush was vacationing. After his testimony, it was revealed that Tenet was wrong; that he'd gone there on August 17. Others are discussing questions relating to how involved Bush then was in what the C.I.A. was doing about terrorism, or about whether Condoleezza Rice fibbed in her testimony about how often Bush met with Tenet. I'm not going to get into that.
What interests me here is the notion that sometimes, even under oath, people get things wrong. I don't think Tenet was deliberately lying. He had no reason to lie and even if he did, it would be the kind of lie that is easily disproven. He just misremembered.
This happens…to everyone. I'm even willing to believe George W. Bush misremembered when he claimed to have watched live TV coverage of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Back during the last presidential debates, Al Gore happened to mention that some time before, he'd gone with James Lee Witt, who was then the head of FEMA, to inspect the damage from some flooding in Texas. It later came out that Gore had gone to other disasters with Witt but had inspected the Texas flood situation with the regional FEMA director. People like William Bennett immediately cited this as an example of Al Gore being a pathological liar.
This is one of the aspects of politics that really annoys me. I don't think it reflects on someone's integrity that they occasionally misspeak or misremember. I do think it reflects on the integrity of those who try to spin everything the opposition does as a lie and a sign of aberrant character…and are quite willing to make up rules as they go along. John McCain and a few others have scored points with me because they occasionally (not always) refuse to stoop to such tactics and scold those who do. But they don't do it very often and most of our public figures and pundits don't do it at all.