Has there been a politician with a more glaring history of lying than George Santos from Long Island, who in November won a U.S. congressional race? There seems no limit to the fantasies of his mind.
During his campaign for a previously held Democratic seat, he claimed that his maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust. That was after fleeing persecution in Ukraine and then again in Belgium during World War II. None of this was true. Those grandparents were born in Brazil. His Caucasian mother barely escaped “socialism in Europe,” he said on other occasions. She too was born in Brazil. Santos’ website once claimed that his mother was at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and that she later died because of that attack. No public records or media accounts support either claim.
Bragging about educational accomplishments, Santos claimed that he graduated from Horace Mann, the elite New York college-prep school, ranked among the five best K–12 private schools in the U.S. A post-secondary degree followed his studies at Baruch College. Neither school can confirm his attendance there. Nor can numerous other claims be confirmed, including having worked as a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
As this is being written, a new complaint has been filed with the Federal Election Commission claiming that Santos has been “knowingly and willfully concealing the true sources of his campaign’s funding, misrepresenting how his campaign spent its money, and illegally paying for personal expenses with campaign funds.” Investigators had wondered how he could claim having no major assets in 2020, and then report owning upwards of $11 million two years later.
In response to charges that he has been lying, Santos said: “Did I embellish my resume? Yes, I did.” Well, embellish means to dress up a story, not to invent one. In short, Santos comes across as an around-the-clock fabulist. It’s definitely a moral issue — and may become a legal one. For his efforts, investigations of his tall tales are ongoing at local, state and federal levels. Yet, within hours of Kevin McCarthy becoming Speaker of the House, Santos was officially seated as a member of the U.S. Congress.
More surprises include his being welcomed by many of his Republican colleagues; few had asked that he not be seated in Congress. Less surprising, but just as telling, is that his warmest on-screen embrace came from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she who easily wins reelections after her rants that California wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers controlled by the Rothschilds.
We want politicians who are honest and trustworthy, who accept responsibility when things they’ve supported go wrong. However, this is a highly polarized time when ugly name-calling, false charges and imposters riding high in their search for publicity are the hallmarks of smash-mouth partisan politics.
We wonder at the relationship of politicians and morality. We often tend to look at political morality in terms of a personal morality that values honesty, empathy, respect and integrity.
Political morality necessarily exists on a somewhat different plane, though the personal and political do interact. We do well to remember James Madison’s reflection on human nature, that if people were angels, government would be unnecessary. Human misbehavior requires rules and regulations.
Interacting with others requires negotiations, haggling, even horsetrading. Many issues are too complex to get all parties on board. There may be competing constituencies involved, as with a budget that seems appropriate nationally but is unpopular in a particular section of the country — civil rights legislation during the 1960s being a case in point. Many a southerner in Congress had to shade the truth of what he was doing on Capitol Hill.
Last week during the Republican speakership voting, we watched a small group hell-bent on playing “my way or the highway” brinkmanship until, through 15 roll-call votes, they secured what at the moment were private concessions. Some in the majority privately feared that the about-to-be House Speaker might be trading away the “kitchen sink.”
Nothing here should be construed as meaning that anything goes in practicing politics. President Lyndon Johnson badly harmed the national interest when he lied about enlarging the war in Vietnam and never apologized. Those who care about fairness and doing harm are on sound moral grounds in opposing tax policies designed to enrich multi-millionaires and billionaires more than the working and middle classes.
Even in the individual realm of personal morality, issues can be complicated. In the Old Testament book of Joshua, for example, the harlot Rahab blatantly lied about hiding spies, reasoning that she did it on behalf of a good cause – that the Israelites would acquire Palestine. And her deception appeared to have pleased God.
Ron Lora, a native of Bluffton, is professor emeritus of history at the University of Toledo. Contact him at [email protected]. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of the newspaper.
