Keller @ Large: 'National Honesty Day' Not Working

BOSTON (CBS) - If you missed Saturday night's White House Correspondent's Dinner, you didn't miss much. But along with unfunny jokes, comedian Michelle Wolf's ribbing of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was a reference to a festering problem in our political culture.

"She burns facts," Wolf said of Sanders, "and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like, maybe she's born with it; maybe it's lies. It's probably lies."

When you finish not laughing, let's talk about lies, coin of the realm in some DC corners for decades.

• President John Kennedy's lies were covered up at times by a friendly press corps.
• By the time President Richard Nixon came along, they were more eager to expose them.
• President Bill Clinton's lies got him impeached and disbarred, with questionable deterrent value.
• The fact-checking website PolitiFact caught former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling lies in 12% of the statements they reviewed. But that record puts her
  near the back of the modern-day pack.
• According to PolitiFact, President Barack Obama lied 14% of the times they checked.
• Sen. Bernie sanders was twice as bad, lying 28% of the time.
• But that is topped by Vice-President Mike Pence's 31% lying rate.
• And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's eye-popping 43% pace.
• And then there's President Trump, the undisputed king, with 47% of his statements checked coming up false.

Which raises a troubling question about Mr. Trump and former FBI Director James Comey accusing each other of being liars - is that really news anymore?

Perhaps it's not so much that there's more lying going on than before; maybe we're just more aware of it. In any case, we couldn't let National Honesty Day, a "holiday" created more than two decades ago to help hold lying pols accountable, pass without noting that it doesn't seem to be working very well.