To the editor:

Did anyone else notice the first paragraph in an AP story at the top of page 3A of Wednesday’s Journal-World? It quotes Gov. Brownback saying “he is considering all options to fill a massive budget deficit that he didn’t know existed until after the election earlier this month.”  

Those massive deficits have been projected by everyone who’s paying attention for well over a year and widely reported in the national, regional and local news.  

To make a statement like that, the governor has to believe that a small percentage of people will believe him and that everybody else has conceded that lying is a necessary component of American politics and that the truth has become an abstract concept that is rarely helpful in winning elections.  

Maybe that’s why honest candidates are so hard to recruit. To enter the political arena today one must learn to lie with conviction both matter-of-factly and with sanctimony and to repeat it often if you can remember what it was.