It seems you can’t wade through the morass of verbal contortions that pass for speechifying in an election year without stumbling over the word “accountable.” This word is usually issued in the form of a candidate’s declared intention to seize Washington by its woolly hide and bring it to heel. In a speech announcing his candidacy, John McCain promised to hold government accountable for the money it spends. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, believes “no one should be afraid to hold our government accountable.” Barack Obama believes teachers should be held accountable — as well as taxpayers, for not giving them enough money. If you sling a stick — preferably a big, heavy stick — at a Washington politician, likely as not the word you’ll make him stutter is some version of “accountability.”

The fiction is that Washington is in the fell grip of “special interests” (read: those interests which don’t jibe with our own), and only someone pure and noble can seize the sword from the stone and restore our kingdom to its glory. Thus every four years a string of professional talkers whose skeletons are sufficiently stuffed into their closets enter the field to do battle, and the ensuing fray looks like a lunchroom slap fight at a MENSA conference.

It’s enough to make you long for a return to the days of inbred monarchies, when conditions were tougher, to be sure, but at least there was no C-SPAN.

I had a political science professor who liked to quip that the problem with American government is not that it isn’t accountable enough, but rather that it is too accountable. We run deficits because we want our government goodies but would rather have our grandchildren pay for them. We fight a two-front war without any visible sacrifice — outside that of military families — at home, because we like the idea of fending off the radical Muslim hordes, but not enough to do without the latest XBox release. We turn a blind eye to the perfect entitlement storm brewing — Medicare, Social Security, and various and sundry unaccounted federal spending commitments — because we are an Ecclesiastes 8:15 nation, and woe be unto any presidential candidate who would stand between us and our eating and drinking and merrymaking.

Going to Washington to make government accountable is like trying to steer a horse by his tail; it’s a lot of malodorous fluff, and you’re likely as not to get kicked. The people who get there, by and large, are followers posing as leaders, and they know better than to tell voters that we can’t have peace, bread, and circuses without cost. Little wonder that the entire enterprise gives the air of a frenzied game of musical chairs, with the music box fed by a purse whose claimants are growing, and whose contributors are dwindling.

If we would have accountable government, in other words, we need citizens willing to be accountable, and I suspect most of us won’t stand for that until we have no choice in the matter. Until that day comes, we’ll squeal at the mention of any significant spending cut or tax increase, continue to know next to nothing about foreign affairs and everything about American Idol, and blithely wonder, in a decade or a century or however long it takes a great nation to lose its steam, why things aren’t like they used to be.

It puts me in mind of H.L. Mencken’s famous quote: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Only it isn’t just the common people, it’s corporations and tycoons as well, everyone bellying up to the trough that is our national altar to the god whose name is: You Deserve It All.

And for the day when that altar is whittled to a tombstone, I can recommend the inscription:

America: They got what they wanted

Several days ago I found this small news item about Bristow Group, Inc., a helicopter transport services firm whose affiliate paid bribes to the Nigerian government in return for tax reductions. What struck me was the wording of the company’s settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission: “Bristow neither admitted nor denied the charges but agreed to stop violating federal anti-bribery laws.”

In the same article, a Bristow executive takes credit for reporting the bribery, engaged in by people on the company’s payroll in Nigeria. Now, to be sure, no company can police all of its employees and contractors, all of the time. And there is something to be said for the fact that Bristow reported the violation to the SEC. At the same time, this legalese sticks in the craw, especially when it’s followed by self-congratulation for admitting the non-admission. I’m not saying I did it, your honor, but I promise to stop. And hats off to me for being so forthcoming.

It set me to wondering how often this happens. I did a Google search of the terms “admitted nor denied” and “stop doing,” and found plenty of reading material. There is the group of hospital executives who formed a company to sell “marketing advice” to the vendors who sought their business. Title insurance companies that secretly set up payments to real estate agents who steered business their way. Executives who establish shell companies so they can receive unreported income from the companies they are supposed to be stewarding. A company that sold life insurance to U.S. soldiers by promising a “savings fund” component that, when you read the fine print, barely rose above their premium payments. Once they were exposed, all had the same response: We’re not saying we did anything wrong, but we promise to stop now that you’ve caught us.

To be fair, we’ve seen cases of governments bludgeoning companies with overblown charges, until the targeted company finds it’s better off settling than fighting back. At times it seems our nation’s politicians are leading businessmen, lawyers, journalists, politicians, real estate agents, and other professions in the race to see who can be perceived as the least trustworthy. Perhaps this is what unsettles me about events like the Bristow Group’s non-announcement of a non-act that they promise to stop non-doing — the fact that it doesn’t draw laughter, or outrage. It’s just one more small news item in a world that no longer cares to pretend that truth matters. A company can simultaneously admit wrongdoing and deny wrongdoing, all while promising to stop doing what it won’t admit it ever did in the first place, and this is a commonplace.

It makes you think, doesn’t it, about how much of our everyday life is consumed by half-truths and small lies.

Yes boss, I think your strategic vision makes sense.

Nice sermon today, Reverend.

Kids, I’m working these long hours because I want to give you everything you need.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel no different than a politician on the stump, promising everything to everyone, because while we have less and less grace for liars (as witnessed by the success of “gotcha” journalism), we have even more disdain for anyone who tells us the ugly, unglamorous truth. Truth was crucified on Golgotha, and we murder it again every day in our business, our politics, our personal lives.

Here’s a thought experiment: what would happen if, just for one day, we all of us told the truth? Would it be heaven, or hell?

Or consider a wrinkle on that scenario: what if we all stopped lying? No more white lies, no truth-shadings, no self-deception. There would be nothing on television. Politicians would have to shelve their speeches. Corporate annual reports would be reduced to postcards. The magazines in your grocery store checkout line would just have menus, and articles on how to cut an onion without crying.

Things would certainly get a lot quieter. Maybe we all ought to give it a try.

Not that I’m admitting or denying that I’m a liar, of course. I’m just saying that I’d like to stop.