If You Build It

The Anthony Weiner scandal is splattered all over the media like a double handful of swamp muck. We are also being treated to a rerun of the intimate details of John Edwards, his mistress, and the hush money. These scandals are just the latest in a series involving politicians and sex. Infidelity and hypocrisy seem to be the bipartisan standard. We really should be paying attention to the ongoing rental of our government by corporate interests, but I’ll bite the hook.

It seems that our elected representatives are no better than we are, and probably worse. We shouldn’t be surprised. Think about how these people get where they are. Remember the tag line from the movie Field of Dreams? “If you build it, they will come.” If you build a carnival side show, expect freaks to show up and staff it.

First, we have a system that requires candidates to extract large sums of money from wealthy donors. This requires a level of ass-kissing that encourages the natural con artist while it degrades and discourages the honest person. Then we run the candidates through an extended gauntlet of campaign events, rubber-chicken dinners, coffees, press conferences, intense media scrutiny, character assassination (both received and given), repetitive stump speeches, and more groveling for dollars. The candidate is alternately called a savior and a traitor. Candor and natural behavior are discouraged. A successful campaigner controls every detail of every public moment and never utters an unconsidered word. In politics, hypocrisy isn’t a flaw, it’s a technique. You’d have to be kind of nuts to put up with this. And they are. I look at Congress and all the presidents of my lifetime and I see arrogance, egotism, narcissism, and various shades of neuroticism.

I remember talking with a reporter I knew right after he emerged from the National Governor’s Conference in Burlington VT. I asked him what it was like inside the security perimeter. He said, “I’ll quote from Star Wars. ‘You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.’ The governors are polished shiny fake assholes, and their wives are polished and fake and their kids are polished and fake.” Sadly, that’s what sells on a 30-second television ad. It’s all image and money and sound bites. And it selects a certain type of people.

A big part of the problem is the money. Quite simply, it forces politicians to lie for their very survival. There is one story for the rich donor and another for the 1,000 ordinary voters.

Another big problem is the fractured and confused electorate bumping up against a two-party system. Two parties aren’t enough to cover all the factions, so each party sets up a fake “big tent” and then triangulates a path that panders to the power base, ignores the truly faithful, and waffles just enough to scoop up people who aren’t paying attention. It’s cynical and dishonest and its goal is the preservation of power.

Twenty-four hour profit driven news coverage doesn’t help. Politicians trade extremism for face time. They have to deliver those pointed sound bites whether they mean anything or not. Editors and reporters follow the political extremes, maudlin human interest stories, and, yes, sex scandals. Anthony Weiner’s tacky emails are the least important thing on the entire national political spectrum, but they are inescapable on the news.

(I have to say this: Weiner should answer the calls for his resignation by saying that he’ll resign over emails after David Vitter resigns over having actual sex with actual prostitutes.)

The general population is a big problem, too. The American public has been lied to long and vigorously, jollied, flattered, and pandered to, enough that a childish delusional state has set in. We’ve reached a state of personality politics where the electorate is forever looking for the perfect Daddy to kiss the booboo on our collective knee and make it all better. Of course, there is no perfect Daddy out there, and there is no magic kiss, so people are forever dissatisfied. Despite the perfect record of failure, most people keep looking instead of focusing on policy. (Borrrring!) Specifically, most people don’t pay attention to our policies on selecting politicians. They just waste time loving them or hating them.

We couldn’t design a better attractant for dysfunctional personalities if we tried. Anthony Weiner, David Vitter, and John Edwards (and the dozen others we know about) are just symptoms of the situation.