In the ordinary political process, the politicians can easily dissemble, pretend and forget, while talking airily about the sunlit uplands and yet delivering nothing.
His public appearances during the campaign, far from brutally honest, were larded with dissembling, prevarication and demagoguery, empty catchphrases and scripted one-liners.
On this slowly crumbling edifice was a whole power structure built -- small wonder they were prepared to dissemble, evade and outright lie to protect it.