For the second time in about a month, HLN Channel is showing reruns of "The West Wing" series. Kind of fun to watch in retrospect, they harken to a time when politics still felt rife with possibility.
But warts still emerged. Do you remember that the President Bartlet had multiple sclerosis, that very few people were in on it (but his wife, a physician, gave him shots to deal with it under the table), and that he was eventually censored by a concurrent resolution of Congress (requiring no signature by the president)?
That was kind of a Big Lie, too, surprising as it was because Jed Bartlet seemed like the kind of straight-up guy who brooked no nonsense. Nice literary license there, dodging impeachment, which a Democrat would almost certainly have faced in a Republican-controlled Congress.
The Republicans held the prerequisite hearings. The chair was succinct and direct: "Did people lie? Were people told to lie? Are people lying now?"
Such is stuff of fiction, illuminating possibilities out of a decorous past. Living through the era of the Big Lie, as we are still, with dozens of Republican candidates mouthing it endlessly, even though they may not at heart believe it themselves but smacks of effective politics in gerrymandered districts, gamed by seiners of power that may last generations.
Did people lie? Openly. Were people told to lie? Unquestionably. Are people lying now? Endlessly.
So can we really gasp when a Congressional candidate runs on a resume' of nearly pure fiction? When he makes an end run around an unsuspecting public, and media to boot? With the very recent turgid examples of ex- and his unabashed, unshameable nonsense and outright lies on top of lies on top of lies?
C'mon now. You can't possibly be surprised.
You can't be surprised that a Congressional candidate, George Santos, got away with a trashcan full of lies about his background and history. And that the media, perhaps stretched beyond decent coverage possibilities, perhaps once again covered instead by naïveté, never caught it. In New York. On Long Island. In Queens.
They aren't like totally isolated areas or anything. People have televisions there. They can read. You can look it up.
Being naive is a delight, a refreshing skip through life, until you have to pay for it. Thousands, now, must do exactly that. They now have a Member of Congress who got there by concocting a complete fable.
You can't possibly be surprised, either, by the Republican Congressional leadership, led (as it were) by an ultimate obfuscator himself (not the ultimate obfuscator; you know who that is), running again and hiding from this obvious ethical torpedo--as if it could. Messing with this could remove one of the crucial votes Kevin McCarthy needs to become House Speaker, if in fact he can promise very unethical clowns to be standup idiots, instead of mere idiots, for the next two years.
In the history of Congressional races, there has been plenty of lying. And maybe, just maybe, someone somewhere in our esteemed 236-year history, did the same thing: Made up stuff that he didn't have to answer for, the overwhelming percentage of the scenario from which he built an entirely false image.
Such is the price our system exacts. The Republicans will be in charge now, having gamed things very nicely over time and several states, and they won't lift a finger to investigate or even question Santos' veracity, which hovers just about ground zero right now. Can you image Nancy Pelosi's reaction? She arranged to have Majorie Taylor Greene removed from all Congressional committees for her egregious comments about, well, damn near everything. What about this guy?
She would wring the slime out of her hands, get the right Democrat to the mic, and start the process of first, investigation, and second, removal and a new election. Each house of Congress has the power to set rules about who sits in their chambers, it says in the Constitution, and running on a platform of pure deception might just be one of those firewalls. It says here that George Santos' credentials would have been DOA with a decent, ethical, clear-thinking Speaker.
Kevin McCarthy isn't that and never will be that. His intent is power, all of that and only that. His silence about a number of things is revelant of being not even regrettably complicit.
I'm quite sure he's got it in his head that he can promise a number of people a number of things that will never come to pass anyhow, just so he can have 218 votes to become Speaker. Then he'll turn Jim Jordan loose to make up a revanche committee to smear the January 6 committee--which will take some doing--and create enough bother to shift attention to someone they'll have to make up more stories about (Hunter Biden, anyone?).
Today, the New York Times announced that investigations will take place surrounding Santos' 'embellishments,' as he calls his lies, perhaps to soften the effect even unto himself. The whole business smacks of the kind of clean-up that takes place after a natural disaster: Necessary, but fundamentally reparable only with a great deal of time and attention.
The press dropped the ball here. But we also shouldn't ignore the basic, now baked-in corruption of Republicans, who will do anything and now say anything to get their way, and who cannot even face votes against them lest they admit they may not have had the best ideas. So they make them up without the slightest desire of accountability. If you have power, of course, you don't need any.
"The West Wing" features a telling confrontation between the counsel for the majority (read: Republican) and a Senator who also, in a scorched earth approach, wants to bring in Chief of Staff Leo McGarry's alcohol and drug addiction, from which he became clean, into the hearings. The counsel, showing some ethics, says to the Senator: "This is why good people don't like us."
A prescient comment, that. But too many good people still hold their noses and vote Republican anyhow. Only when those numbers diminish can we get this country back on track, and have conversations that need not be existential. Maybe the 2022 mid-terms represented a high-water mark for the liars. Maybe, with George Santos leading the way, the tsunami is about to envelop us all. We won't have long to wait.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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