Honesty Doesn't Win Presidential Elections

In his speech about the U.S. presidential campaign on Thursday, Mitt Romney described both parties’ front-runners, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as dishonest. Voters seem to agree. Is it all-important, though, for a successful candidate to be perceived as honest, or more honest than his or her chief rival? Previous election results appear to indicate the opposite.

“Dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark,” Romney said after cataloging the developer’s business failures and before listing some of his false statements during the campaign. Then he lit into the Democratic front-runner, claiming Clinton and her husband had been living “at the intersection of money and politics, trading their political influence to enrich their personal finances.” The unsuccessful 2012 Republican nominee added, “A person so untrustworthy and dishonest as Hillary Clinton must not become president.”