David M. Shribman: The impact of truth bombs

Yes, as many of us have wondered, there actually may be something in the water on the American campaign trail or in the White House.

It turns out it is a form of sodium thiopental, known to moviegoers and readers of crime novels as truth serum. The 20th century comedian Art Linkletter was famous for his remark that "kids say the darnedest things," a phrase whose title became affixed to a popular CBS television show for eight years. Political scientists and commentators may doubt its veracity, but there is sufficient evidence to support the merit of its corollary: "Presidential candidates and U.S. chief executives say the truth, sometimes in the darnedest ways."

While acknowledging there's scant medical evidence for truth serum, let's nonetheless stipulate that some presidents (Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, Gerald Ford) seemed to have drunk deeply of sodium thiopental while others (Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton) were only occasional sippers. As for the current occupant of the White House, a teetotaler whose preferred beverage is Diet Coke ― a libation that contains neither the popular preservative sodium benzoate that is an ingredient in some other diet drinks nor, more significantly, the supposedly veracity-inducing sodium thiopental that has spurred scores of truth-serum fables.

In the case of Donald Trump, truth serum seems to be administered by a plastic medicine dropper, and then only occasionally. One of those occasions occurred this month, perhaps with important political significance.

Trump's gold-framed presidential walk of fame doesn't include medical screenings for sodium thiopental, but if it did, there might be special gold frames for these figures:

― Dwight D. Eisenhower. The 34th president was known for deliberately obfuscating his remarks, once telling press secretary Jim Haggerty that if a sensitive question came up in a press conference, he would simply issue a sleep-inducing cloud of rhetoric that would confuse White House correspondents. But when reporters asked him to name a time Vice President Nixon, then the Republican presidential nominee to succeed the former general, influenced the president's judgment, his answer was: "If you give me a week, I might think of one."

― Nixon himself. When British journalist David Frost asked the former president in 1977 about some of the Watergate episodes that led to his resignation as president, his answer was, "Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." The statement seemed startling 48 years before the Supreme Court, in its ruling supporting presidential immunity from prosecution, largely affirmed this particular Nixon Doctrine.

― Ronald Reagan. The onetime actor was especially comfortable in front of a radio microphone; he once was, after all, a personality on a Des Moines radio station where, working off telegraph accounts, he recreated Chicago Cubs baseball games for a huge Midwestern audience. As president, he began a custom of Saturday radio broadcasts and, seven months after he told the nation that "we must and will engage the Soviets in a dialogue ... that will serve to promote peace in the troubled regions of the world, reduce the level of arms and build a constructive working relationship," his unscripted off-air aside revealed another aspect of his view of U.S.-Soviet relations by quipping, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

― George W. Bush. Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Bush issued a frank commentary on the war. It came in a meeting with Army General Ray Odierno: "And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq."

― Barack Obama. Not yet president, but heavily favored to succeed George W. Bush, the Illinois senator provided a 2008 campaign assessment of some of the Pennsylvania voters who were resisting his appeal ― an analysis that trailed him for his years in the White House: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." This, and the comment that follows, may not be truths ― but they accurately reflected the true sentiments of the speaker.

― Hillary Clinton. One of the reasons she didn't win the White House, where her husband uttered one of the biggest fibs in American history ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky"), was her remarks in a speech at a 2016 LGBTQ fundraiser in New York: "You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic ― you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that." So clearly was that Clinton's view, and so searing was the way she expressed it, that supporters of Trump came to create campaign placards that described themselves as "deplorables."

One of the presidents omitted from this account of Presidential Famous Quotations is John F. Kennedy, who once said, "The leadership of the American Legion has not had a constructive thought for the benefit of this country since 1918." This remark does not qualify on two counts: It was made a dozen years before he became president, and it is not provably true.

Now we come to Trump's reaction this month when asked whether he might hurry to make peace with Iran as a way to ease the economic distress that has pushed average gasoline prices past the psychological red line of $4 a gallon. "I don't think about Americans' financial situation," he said.

Democrats and some Republicans jumped on the remarks, suggesting that a plutocrat who owns 10 hotels and more than a dozen golf clubs is insensitive to Americans' economic pressures.

The Trump comment has become part of the folklore of the age, but in fairness, some accounts did not note that that comment was preceded by a statement that the president's top priority was denying Iran nuclear weapons.

Even so, the remark stung, and its presence in this assortment of presidential truth bombs was affirmed by Trump himself in a conversation with Bret Baier of Fox News, when he said, "That's a perfect statement. I'd make it again."

As Reagan once said in a different context, aimed at President Jimmy Carter, there he goes again. Presidents say the darnedest things.

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David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.