Pfiffner's third, and most troublesome, category of presidential untruthfulness he labels as lies of policy deception, where "a president says that the government is doing one thing when in fact it is doing another."
Pfiffner explains that "misleading the public about the direction of government policy does not allow the electorate to make an informed choice and undermines the premise of the democratic process." He cites the work of American philosopher and ethicist Sissela Bok to suggest why such deception is abhorrent: "It allows those in power to override or nullify the right vested in the people to cast an informed vote in critical elections."
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