Americans hate hypocrisy. We call it out, we deride it, we claim to despise it. But what if hypocrisy isn’t only inevitable in politics but actually necessary? What if the very thing we think makes us weak is actually what keeps us human?
The history of American hypocrisy is tragically long. Out of all the things I wished about my country, it was that our hypocrisy would end. Part of me still wishes this, but I’m not so sure any more.
There was a time when I thought hypocrisy was a great moral travesty, perhaps the great moral travesty. When I was a kid going to (Muslim) Sunday school in the suburbs of Philadelphia, the hypocrite was a character of intense fascination. In the Quran, the hypocrites were a distinct group, mentioned time and time again across 29 chapters. They were the worst of the worst. They were especially dangerous because they made you think they were your friends when, really, they were anything but.
Later, in college, as an anti-war activist furious with America’s record in the Middle East, I found in hypocrisy an explanation for why U.S. foreign policy seemed so dishonest. America preached democracy while supporting some of the most brutal dictators in the region. I organized tent-ins and die-ins, convinced that American hypocrisy made the United States unfit to lead. The gap between what we said and what we did felt like a betrayal of everything I held dear.
The Iraq War exposed just how hollow our rhetoric of freedom and democracy was. All of a sudden, to justify an unprovoked invasion, we now believed in Arab democracy? But the Iraq War wasn’t unique. It was in keeping with a long American tradition of a kind of pretend innocence that hid darker impulses. For decades, we orchestrated coups against democratically elected leaders from Chile to Iran to the Congo, all while wrapping ourselves in the language of freedom and democracy.
Take Operation Ajax in Iran in 1953. Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt, arrived in Tehran with the express goal of overthrowing Mohammed Mossadegh, the elected prime minister who had dared to nationalize his country’s oil industry. The CIA planted propaganda, marshalled paid mobs, and within days had secured a successful coup. It would seem the two Roosevelts had something in common after all: Teddy with his big stick in Latin America, Kermit with his suitcases of cash in the Middle East.
Morality requires hypocrisy
The stories of American hypocrisy are endless.
But over time I came to see something else. Hypocrisy is, in its own perverse way, an acknowledgment of our ideals. It is the “homage that vice pays to virtue,” as the 17th-century French author François de La Rochefoucauld famously put it. After all, to be a hypocrite you must first affirm that certain principles matter—even if you fail to live up to them.
This is where the gap between rhetoric and policy reveals something profound. Where the gap is large, there are two options for closing it: either shift the rhetoric to align with policy or shift policy to align with the rhetoric. But the hypocrisy never goes away entirely. It is only a question of degree.
Paradoxically, hypocrisy is a necessary component of a moral life. It’s also a necessary part of life in a democracy. In a democracy, if you tell voters you’re doing something out of naked self-interest, they’re probably not going to support you. Voters want to feel like the good of the country is being considered. We all want to be moved to something larger than ourselves. The language of inspiration is the mark of any great politician, even if it’s ultimately performative.
At their core, liberal democracies run on a certain kind of faith that the common good can be discovered through discussion and deliberation. In the real world, however, politics is marked by tradeoffs. These tradeoffs require prioritizing some people’s interests over others. It would be a cruel and cynical world if we simply accepted this as the cost of doing business. Hypocrisy allows us to maintain pretenses. The pretense reminds us that we’re capable of being better—and, more to the point, that we should be better. “Ironically,” the political scientist Ruth Grant writes, “the frequency of hypocrisy in politics testifies to the strength of the moral impulse in public life.”
Of course, there is such a thing as being too bad—and too hypocritical. But there is also such a thing as being too good, where your own purity takes precedence over all else, leading to inflexibility and inaction. If you’re so afraid of undermining your own moral superiority, you might be tempted to withdraw from politics altogether. But, as Grant notes, this withdrawal is ultimately self-centered because it is largely concerned with preserving your own sense of righteousness at the expense of helping the people who actually need it.
If we are speaking of power and how it is used—and whether it is possible to wield it more justly—it’s a good thing that the charge of hypocrisy can be leveled against the United States. It means that Americans—and the rest of the world—can hold the U.S. government to its promises and assess whether they have been fulfilled.
Can you change hypocrisy?
Just as people can change, so too can nations. A pessimist, of course, might say that this is just an illusion: people don’t actually change. But I think it’s fair to say that some people change at least some of the time. The same too with countries: they can change, and they sometimes do.
Because the United States has set for itself a higher standard, critics of the American empire have been able to use the moral posturing of politicians against them, as a way to put their flaws under a much-needed microscope. Without the often empty virtue signaling of self-interested politicians—in other words, without hypocrisy—this simply wouldn’t be possible.
In his study of hypocrisy, the political theorist David Runciman argues that the real terror lies when the masks are gone. It is only when there is nothing left to hide that a truly totalitarian society becomes possible. The private and the public, the personal and the political become indistinguishable. The lies are transparent and unapologetic. The leader speaks and acts with unvarnished honesty about the terrible things he plans to do. This is what a society without pretense would look like. It would be one without compromise or contradiction. It would be, above all, honest. But this sort of honesty has its costs.
Dictatorships, for their part, rarely bother with hypocrisy; they simply rule by force. This makes them more “honest.” The People’s Republic of China, founded as a beacon of Communism, betrayed the ideals of its initial formation and revolution. The party, of course, is still called the Chinese Communist Party. However, no one takes seriously the CCP’s own claims to being communist, so it’s pointless to criticize China’s unmet communist aspirations when they are no longer aspired to. Here, there is no real sense of violation, since nothing is really being violated.
American hypocrisy is different. It signals the recognition of virtue, because it only makes sense to conceal bad behavior when you actually realize it’s bad. There is guilt and even shame. The American style of hypocrisy is like lying rather than bullshitting—the liar can only obscure the truth if he knows what the truth is to begin with.
To be seen as hypocritical is the cost of trying to be better than you actually are. Or, to put it differently, insofar as hypocrisy points to an aspiration not met, the aspiration remains. This is better than the alternative. The pretense to morality reminds us that we’re at least capable of being better—and, more to the point, that we should be better.
In an era of authoritarian resurgence, the temptation is to dismiss hypocrisy as weakness or to demand impossible purity. But if the choice is between hypocrisy and cynicism, we should prefer hypocrisy every time. America’s hypocrisies—on democracy at home and on human rights abroad—may be infuriating, but they also keep alive the standards against which citizens can hold their leaders accountable.
Far from being a mere flaw, hypocrisy is the crucible in which ideals and reality collide. It is through this tension that societies grapple with their aspirations, confront their shortcomings, and inch toward the values they profess but fail to fully embody. The gap between rhetoric and action serves as a constant reminder of our unfulfilled commitments.
To lose hypocrisy would be to lose the very language of ideals. That’s why the case for hypocrisy is, in the end, a case for hope. In this light, hypocrisy becomes our uncomfortable ally, prodding us toward the very ideals we claim to cherish. If there is a case for hypocrisy, it is this: It unmasks. And in unmasking, it reminds us of who we still can be.
Adapted with permission from Shadi Hamid’s new book The Case For American Power (Simon & Schuster; November 11, 2025)
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