Why disingenuous instead of liar?
In politics, I think the semantic distinction between the words is much less important than cultural distinction. Calling someone a liar is the equivalent of nuclear war. Calling someone disingenuous (or any of a dozen other words) is like the low-level skirmishing of the Cold War. Most people on the public stage have learned to avoid the collateral damage of nuclear war. They know if they call a politician a liar, that it will make a big fuss, and that that politician will probably come back after them. And, being a politician, the accusee will soon be the accused, as pretty much all politicians say something at one time or another that is a lie. What’s interesting to me is that this behavior now extends beyond politicians to journalists. Even when someone is lying as plain as day, most journalists won’t point that out. At the end of the day, it all seems to be based on a polite fiction that lying is uncommon and very wrong — the reality is that it is as common as rain, and most peop
