In 2018 and beyond if there is one message I’d like to present to our elected leaders it is that they need to stop lying to their voters.

It is an inconvenient truth that many of our politicians lie regularly.

Much of the coverage here focuses on blatant and outlandish lies that deal with demonstrably false claims about things like the size of a crowd or whether one has “flip-flopped” on a given issue.

However, due to the fact that such brazen lies can be easily disproven, they are not of the sort that concern me most.

Instead, the most troublesome to me are of the softer variety.

Take the example of the politician who makes promises that simply cannot be kept. Imagine a scenario where a politician promises that if elected s/he will enact a given policy despite the fact that enough support does not exist in the legislative body to make this happen.

This situation plays itself out prominently in elections for executive positions like a governor’s race or a presidential one.

Think of an election where candidates are making promises dealing with the affordability of college tuition.

You can easily envision a candidate making a promise that, if elected, s/he will pass a bill to make public college free. A lot of voters get excited about that promise and when that candidate wins they then expect to have that promise delivered upon.

However, the promise neglected the fact that the legislative support does not exist for that policy. The result of this will be that voters will lose trust in the words of their representatives.

Worse yet, the promise distorts the expectations from voters, who are not receiving accurate portrayals of what policy options are possible in the near term.

This will leave voters unsatisfied with tangible policy gains that fall short of the most aspirational policies.

None of this is to say that candidates can’t be ambitious and advocate for policies that don’t have support to be viable in a given moment.

However, this is to say that candidates need to be honest about the level of support that exists and properly couch their promises with the reservations of what will need to happen for a promise to become reality.

While the promise of free tuition is an issue of prominence on the left, the same critique can be levied at Republicans who promised to repeal Obamacare and then balked when given the opportunity to act on it.

Similar lies present themselves in situations when a politician obscures or even denies the downside of a given policy option that he or shee is presenting.

We can stick with the example of college affordability here.

When presenting their plan to make public college free, the candidate will face criticism from those who do not think such a plan should be implemented.

In response, the candidate should honestly address criticism while acknowledging tradeoffs that may be present in the position towards which they are advocating.

The simplest criticism to levy at such a plan would be that it would be expensive.

The candidate would then respond by detailing the plan to fund such a program.

One can expect that s/he will highlight certain popular ways to fund the tuition program and gloss over those that are less popular.

We have come to expect a politician to promise that this will be paid for by closing a regularly targeted tax loophole or ending funding for an unpopular government initiative while neglecting other more wide ranging and negative burdens that will have to come into effect for the policy to be implemented.

This sort of distortion would never be acceptable in commonplace settings but has seemingly become par for the course from our politicians.

The end result of this approach is that it leads voters to think that one’s opposition has no valid critiques. Without recognizing such a critique, the natural conclusion to come is that the other side is simply out to obstruct a worthy end from coming about for the sake of obstructing.

This brings us to a place where it is nearly impossible to build a consensus toward solving a problem because we are led to believe that opposition is motivated by nefarious rather than genuine purposes.

These types of promises create the conditions that undermine the trust that our political institutions need to survive. Simply put, these lies lead Americans to lose faith in their government and their leaders.

One will question the value of participating in a democracy that produces those who can’t keep their word. Others will grow to view an opposition as one that does not have the interests of those who they represent at heart rather than an adversary with whom consensus may be possible.

These transformations are losses that are destructive to democracy.

To avoid falling deeper into this web it should be on all of us as voters to hold our leaders accountable at the ballot box. We need to speak with our votes and reject those who do not represent us honestly.

Peter Fishkind

Roslyn Heights