Counterfeit Memories: Poor Recollections or Bald-Faced Lies?

Both of this year’s presidential candidates have a problem with sticking to the facts.

Both of this year’s presidential candidates have a problem with sticking to the facts. Flickr, Emma Kaden.

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

- L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“And as the years have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too needed ten, thirty, then a full minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. I suppose the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness someday.”

 -Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“As you get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can't remember the other two.”

-Sir Norman Wisdom

My wife and I are in the process of decluttering our now-empty nest. I called this "de-crapification." But every now and then, I unearth the odd golden nugget, or in this case, a piece of fossilized excrement: my high school transcripts chock a block with Bs, Cs, and uh, Ds in the non-humanity courses. I had poor high school teachers, you see. Their rote lesson plans, antiquated teaching methods, and poor dedication are the reasons for my mediocre performance. My initial memories told me this. 

Yet further consideration reveals something else: when it came to the STEM courses, I was an indolent sloth. Did I study hard, go for extra help (the math teachers were always available during lunch and study hall breaks), or ask the better physics students for assistance? Nope. It was not the teachers. It was the guy in the mirror.  

Later, after digesting this revelation, I began to ponder how I could maintain the poor teacher belief and came to a simple conclusion: pride winneth out. AD good and teacher bad made a more compelling narrative for my self-esteem and personal brand. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend” and all that.   

One of my favorite Nietzsche epigrams is “Memory says, 'I did that.' Pride replies, 'I could not have done that.' Eventually, memory yields.” Let’s amend that. Pride says I did that, and memory yields.  

Our challenge is that politics today are dominated by too much memory-yielding and legend printing. We are at a point in American history in which we have not one but two different candidates, both seemingly with memory issues. The question is whether a person who states something that is not true is a fabulist or exhibits Nietzsche’s pridefulness.  

I blame Bill Clinton. Well, to be more precise, I blame the 43% of Americans who elected him in 1992. Just four years earlier, the Democratic primary system booted two candidates out of the nomination race. The first, Gary Hart, for an extramarital affair. The second, who we will get to shortly, for deceitfulness about his personal life. Yet in 1992, Bill Clinton won the nomination despite having had extramarital affairs and lying about them.  

Clinton went on to win the general election. HW Bush, who had served the nation in World War II, distinguished himself as Director of the CIA, Vice President, and President, and was happily married to his wife, lost. One could claim that Bush’s no new tax pledge was a lie. Political exigencies later in his term caused him to break that promise. 

But when he pledged, did Bush know he would later go back on his word? We certainly know that Clinton, in the moment, was lying. It would be Clinton who later as president would wag his finger at the American public and exclaim that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” only to confess just a few months later, so sorry, I was a two-faced pony soldier as the current occupant of the White House might say. The electorate's tolerance of Clinton's behavior, a mendacious libertine, made it okay for a president to be a mendacious libertine.

In the case of Donald Trump, like Clinton, it is not so much about memory as it is simply bravado. When he says that his presidency was the “best in American history” or that he would never have assaulted a woman because she was not attractive enough to engender his advances, it is not so much a faulty memory as a default mechanism, a personality flaw, and a severe one. Does Trump genuinely believe he has never made a mistake? Even when confronted with clear facts, he would deny them. I am sitting in my office right now, and my memory tells me that the sky is blue and the grass is green. If these evident truths do not fit his momentary needs, Trump will dismiss them not due to memory but rather hubris and self-interest. Trump does not necessarily have memory problems. Instead, he is simply deceitful.  

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Joe Biden is a different case. As noted, during his first presidential run in 1988, Biden famously lifted a section of a speech originally crafted by British Politician Neil Kinnock. And this was not some patriotic pablum but biographical content. After claiming he was near the top of his graduate law school class, it was revealed that he ranked 76th out of 85 students. His low ranking was in no small part due to failing a course because he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school. In 1988, Biden was 46 at the time of these lies, and though even then, a fabricator, he was still a vigorous one.  

That was 35 years ago, and the 81-year-old version is not exactly a man of stamina and dynamism. Just this week, Biden told a peculiar and once again factually challenged story about an uncle who was lost during World War II and who may have died at the hands of cannibals. Wait what? Biden claims that his uncle was shot down over New Guinea in World War II, which has a few cannibalistic tribes. The reality is that his uncle died on a transport plane that had engine trouble and crashed into the sea, not in New Guinea.

For Biden, the thought of a valiant pilot with a strafed aircraft crashing into some tropical land where primitives emerged to consume his body makes for a much better copy. Contrast that with a poor airman strapped to a seat when the engine goes out. The first is noble and compelling. The second is very sad and even pointless. But did Biden know the real story and was embellishing it? If this were 1988 Biden, he was lying. This is the 2024 Biden, so I believe he does not know the artificial from the real. 

The White House, being Biden’s White House, immediately castigated those who pointed out the odd nature of the tale or, worse, found this humorous. On a certain level, it is funny and bizarre. On another level, pointing out the memory issues of an old man and his dead uncle, who did give his life for the country, is indeed cruel. 

On a third level, we are not talking about any man but rather the one who oversees a $4 trillion budget, a vast bureaucracy, drives domestic policy, has 23 direct reports, can order hundreds of thousands of service people into harm’s way, and has access to nuclear codes. For a President who can no longer discern whether his memories are accurate or fanciful, bogus cannibal stories are not that funny.  

AD Tippet is the founder and Publisher of the Conservative Historian. He has conducted extensive research in Political, Religious, Social, and Educational history across all eras and geographies. He has been writing and podcasting for over 12 years. In 2020, he published his first book, The Conservative Historian. He has degrees in history, education, and an MBA. @BelAves