Occasionally, I run across a news article or post, crediting our current leader Lump with “disintegration of trust” or otherwise creating the conditions for the corruption of our federal government. These annoy me because, unfortunately, cronyism, corruption, deception have been baked into our democratic government over the course of many decades.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the founding fathers who wrote the constitution and neglected to provide any real accountability for elected officials. Yes, yes, we have a “system of checks & balances” but one that has been easily corrupted. Two-branches of government are comprised entirely of elected officials and the third branch is appointed by one and approved by the other, so it might as well be elected. Perhaps the founders, being mostly of rational and earnest minds couldn’t conceive of politicized appointments to the judicial branch, but that’s nearly as short-sighted as their lack of consideration for non-whites, non-men and non-landowners.
I can’t unravel how we got to, as a society, a place where specious statements are the norm (I suspect it has a lot to do with the internet, but not entirely, as newspapers and textbooks included some counter-factual stories well before the start of the 21st century and dawn of the modern internet). However, I can easily explain how politicians came to speak speciously with regularity. It’s because there’s little-to-no consequence for doing so.
Our national elections are fraught with problems, but a fundamental one from day one is that there’s no consequence for lying to the public. A politician doesn’t need to know anything about how government is supposed to work, the actual powers of the position they’re running from or anything else. Like the kid running for class president, they can claim that they’ll get everyone half-days on Fridays, free candy on Tuesdays and straight As for math quizes.
This should have been predictable… if the people running for office don’t have to tell the truth about facts, about their plans or even to limit promises to within the powers of the office, why would we expect the post-election officials to be any different?
I think the founding fathers mistakenly believed in a sort of truth-tending, rational voting populace that would naturally root out bad (lying) politicians through elections… but that is not our 21st century “alternative facts” world.
What can we do? We can’t stop people from lying. No, but we could eject them from office, disqualify them from running for office. We could make it illegal for politicians to lie about facts or the powers of the office; not that one lie alone would be disqualifying, but that, for every verifiable lie, the politician must publicly recant and apologize for lying. And if they persist in lying, then they get disqualified (if running for office) or ejected (if already elected) from office.
Politicians already get forced out for various personal scandals, albeit unofficially (e.g., a politician whose nude pictures from dating site were leaked or the conservative politician who is reported to have homosexual trysts, both “forced” to resign by public pressure). However, most personal scandals have little-to-no impact on governing than do frequent lies about policy or facts, and yet personal foibles have a much more severe consequence.
We really need a plan to Make Government Credible Again by removing and blocking consistent liars from public (dis)service, including all governmental elected (or appointed) positions.
