In the 1990s Truman Bewley of Yale University interviewed hundreds of employers and discovered that, faced with a slump in demand, they would rather lay some workers off than cut the pay or hours of everybody.
Somehow, in the woolly free-associative world of Quinn reasoning, this episode seals the case that, when scandal turns up the doorstep, "members of this administration would rather lay low and let Barack Obama be the target".
Many of us would rather lie or make up an excuse than actually say, "No, I don't want to spend my time doing that". In fact, we probably use more energy covering up our true feelings or avoiding situations rather than just saying what we really mean.
And then there's the part that would rather lie on the floor with the dog.
Having made wild claims about some amazing new phenomenon, some researchers would rather lie than admit they were wrong.
This statistical glitch is different from the Bradley Effect, named for the black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, who lost the California governorship in 1982 despite polls that had showed him in the lead, apparently because a small percentage of respondents would rather lie to a pollster than admit to opposing a candidate on the ground of his race.
He would rather lie in bed reading Chaucer than make love, so not really a big loss.
He also said that some detainees don't even need to be tied down, but would rather lie back and accept the feeding tube.
Instead he would rather lie about the magical power of a border wall and stand on the bodies of dead immigrants to garner votes.
