In the men’s locker room at the rather posh club just up the street from our state capitol, you’ll find everything that a well-groomed male politician — or anybody who wants to look like one — might need after a workout and a shower: anti-perspirant and hair gel, packages of single-use toothbrushes pre-treated with minty toothpaste, a rack of disposable razors and, notably, a big canister of 8-inch combs soaking in aqua-blue disinfectant. But one day a while back, there were no combs to be found, which I casually mentioned to a longtime lobbyist who was shaving at the next sink.
And he said, “Yeah, that’s because the Legislature is in town.”
Hardy-har-har. Turns out it’s a longstanding joke at the club — that the comb inventory mysteriously shrinks during the half-year or so that legislators assemble in the capitol.
It’s a mild slander, really, the notion that politicians can’t be trusted not to pilfer a plastic comb. It kind of echoes Mark Twain’s observation a century and a half ago: “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the Legislature is in session.” That’s what Twain wrote. Or, as Will Rogers put it a few decades later, “America has the best politicians money can buy.” Folks thought that was pretty funny.
Certainly, disdain for politicians predates the American republic. And you can’t blame people for harsh judgment when you encounter someone like George Santos, whose brazen and lies finally got him kicked out of Congress after a year. But Santos is an extravagantly bold scoundrel; you don’t often find a politician with a fraction of the chutzpah it takes to engage in such wholesale fabrication.
Yet from the way people talk about politicians, you might conclude that our entire democracy is run by scalawags and scamps, whose only objective is personal aggrandizement. And, sadly, that’s actually what people think: Two-thirds of Americans say politicians run for office “to serve their own personal interests,” according to a Pew Research Center poll a couple of years back.
If that were truly the case, it’s hard to imagine how the nation could have survived so well for so long. Over some decades, I’ve known a lot of politicians, some pretty well, and here’s what I’ve observed: Most of them – local, state and federal – take their responsibility to citizens seriously, and they try to do their jobs well.
Though lately it has seemed as though there are a lot more fabulists and charlatans in public life. And, in fact, when you look at how many politicians are echoing the torrent of lies that Donald Trump always spews, you have to conclude that American democracy is in trouble.
I say that because government of the people only works if government levels with the people – if politicians are honest with their constituents, so that voters are well-informed enough to make good decisions at the ballot box. Votes are skewed when they’re based on flagrant fabrication.
That’s what’s so damaging about such lies as Donald Trump and his acolytes are spewing – like calling the people who are in jail for attacking the Capitol in the January 6th insurrection “hostages,” and claiming the FBI was involved in planning that Trump-inspired attack. It’s balderdash, and the elected officials who parrot that know it is.
No wonder more than half of all Americans told pollsters last spring that they considered the government “corrupt and rigged against them.” No wonder a Pew survey just after the last election found that three-quarters of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job.
You might think that distrust of politicians is just the way things are, and that we need to get used to it. But acquiescence is dangerous, and I’d say that it’s time to push back. The loss of trust can have disastrous effects.
Citizens who don’t trust government can become disengaged or further polarized, or perhaps turn to extremists who promise a revolution to throw out a decayed system. There’s also the practical reality that a government without public support can’t deliver needed services and social progress. If citizens don’t trust the government’s certification that vaccines are safe, for example, will they get a potentially life-saving shot? If government loses credibility, will citizens honor its laws? Will they even pay their fair share of taxes?
That’s why we need to combat the sense that government can’t be trusted – because we can’t risk the consequences of doing nothing.
There are some steps we can take to fix this problem – including better civics education, and news literacy training. But the first step is to strengthen our backbone, and hold politicians to a higher standard of truth-telling – even if it conflicts with our partisan leanings. We cannot accept that it’s OK for any member of Congress to echo Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. Kowtowing to that model of mendacity reflects nothing short of intolerably bad character that ought to be a disqualification from any public office.
Rebuilding trust in government is a big job, because government is everywhere. But I remain convinced that among the half-million or so elected officials in this country, the fibbers and comb-swipers are not in the majority.
By the way, the legislature is back in Albany, and there are plenty of combs in the jar at the club.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.