Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is shown on Nov. 3, 2013.MARK BLINCH/The Canadian Press
After police confirmed the existence of that famous video last fall, Mayor Rob Ford finally admitted to smoking crack, but insisted that he had never lied about it. Reporters, he said, had simply been asking him the wrong questions. Now he says that he did lie, but that everyone lies so it's no big deal. Got it?
The admission came on Monday in a Ford Nation YouTube video starring Mr. Ford and his brother Doug. "Why did I lie?" said the mayor in answer to a question. "I think everybody in the world has lied. Because I was embarrassed. I didn't want to tell the truth."
So, you see, it's simple: He lied because he didn't want to tell the truth.
Except that not very long ago, he was insisting that he never lied at all. "I wasn't lying," he told reporters in November. "You didn't ask the correct questions. No, I'm not an addict and no, I do not do drugs."
He took the same line in an interview with Bill Weir of CNN. When the reporter challenged the mayor over why he had said that he hadn't smoked crack, Mr. Ford was indignant. "No, no, I didn't say that. You're wrong," he said. "You're absolutely wrong what they said. They said, do you smoke crack and are you a crack addict. No, I don't smoke crack cocaine and I'm not a crack addict. Have I? Yes, I have. So that's what – I didn't lie, I don't – I don't smoke crack. I haven't smoked crack in over a year."
Of course, it was nonsense from the start for the mayor to say he failed to answer honestly just because reporters asked him the wrong questions. They asked him many times, in several ways: Have you ever smoked crack cocaine? At least he is not trying to sell that tired story any more.
But his new, I-lied-but-everyone-does-it line is hardly more convincing. Like many of his efforts, this one seems designed to garner sympathy. I lied, but I was ashamed. Who wouldn't lie? You see: I'm just an ordinary guy reacting in an ordinary way.
But, sorry, lying is not justified so easily. A crack-smoking mayor is thankfully not ordinary. Mr. Ford might have won some sympathy if he had admitted off the bat that he had smoked crack. But he waited months to do that and months more to admit he had lied about it. Since last fall, in fact, he has been lying about whether he lied. That he is now being honest about having lied is not, somehow, very cheering.
Mr. Ford's relationship with the truth has always been distant. In other passages from the videos he released on Monday, he repeated several of his best-known stretchers. He said he had saved the city a billion dollars "generally speaking" through various "efficiencies." That claim has been thoroughly debunked. At least $200-million of his billion comes through counting the cancellation of the vehicle registration tax, which cost the city treasury income rather than saving it money.
He said the city government hasn't had a single strike since he came along. In fact, library workers went on strike for 11 days in 2012. He said unemployment has come down to 7 per cent from 11 per cent under his administration. New figures from the city show that, after a dip this summer, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 9.7 in January.
It is tempting to wonder whether Mr. Ford is even capable of telling the truth. "That's as straightforward as I can be," he said in his YouTube performance. Maybe that's the one thing he is being honest about.