How could this possibly be a good political strategy? Well the voters know that he’s a liar but paradoxically that may make them more likely to vote for him. This is because voters are irrational. Many voters with may believe the Brazen Liar Politician may ultimately favor their special interest, their pet issue while throwing other voter blocs (suckers!) under the bus—after the election.
I don’t think its just voters, this strategy also worked well for Lyndon Johnson in closed doors with party elites. He would tell everyone he was on their side, and they would largely believe him, and know also that he was telling everyone else he was on their side too (he’d make it very obvious to eg those listening in on his calls that he was lying or manipulating the other party).
For Lyndon, this often set him up as a good compromise candidate. It was very difficult to find anyone who was remotely acceptable to both northern and southern democrats at the same time. The south trusted him fully (ultimately incorrectly, but for good reason), and the north would tolerate him.
Maybe there’s a rational agent model here, where if Alice prefers outcome A and Bob prefers outcome B, and they must choose a lottery in {pA+(1−p)B|p∈[0,1]} so that UA(pA+(1−p)B)=p and UB(pA+(1−p)B)=1−p, and if they fail to choose then they get uA,uB<0 utility respectively. If each lottery is a candidate, with lottery 1A+0B the candidate honest in their support for A and 0A+1B the candidate honest in their support for B, and pA+(1−p)B for p∈(0,1) a dishonest candidate with a p probability of actually being pro-A, the Nash bargaining solution here will always support a dishonest candidate.
Note that you get a brazen liar (rather than just an undecided but known to be honest candidate) here because you can be more confident the brazen liar isn’t making secret deals. Or rather, you can be confident they are making secret deals, because they’ve made secret deals with you and you know they’re making secret deals with everyone else too, so you can be confident few if any people have some usefully secret information about their position.
I don’t think its just voters, this strategy also worked well for Lyndon Johnson in closed doors with party elites. He would tell everyone he was on their side, and they would largely believe him, and know also that he was telling everyone else he was on their side too (he’d make it very obvious to eg those listening in on his calls that he was lying or manipulating the other party).
For Lyndon, this often set him up as a good compromise candidate. It was very difficult to find anyone who was remotely acceptable to both northern and southern democrats at the same time. The south trusted him fully (ultimately incorrectly, but for good reason), and the north would tolerate him.
Maybe there’s a rational agent model here, where if Alice prefers outcome A and Bob prefers outcome B, and they must choose a lottery in {pA+(1−p)B|p∈[0,1]} so that UA(pA+(1−p)B)=p and UB(pA+(1−p)B)=1−p, and if they fail to choose then they get uA,uB<0 utility respectively. If each lottery is a candidate, with lottery 1A+0B the candidate honest in their support for A and 0A+1B the candidate honest in their support for B, and pA+(1−p)B for p∈(0,1) a dishonest candidate with a p probability of actually being pro-A, the Nash bargaining solution here will always support a dishonest candidate.
Note that you get a brazen liar (rather than just an undecided but known to be honest candidate) here because you can be more confident the brazen liar isn’t making secret deals. Or rather, you can be confident they are making secret deals, because they’ve made secret deals with you and you know they’re making secret deals with everyone else too, so you can be confident few if any people have some usefully secret information about their position.