The old adage that ‘we get the politicians that we deserve’ may be more accurate than we think.
The final chapter of his political career is now being written for former New York Representative George Santos, who has pleaded guilty to a host of financial and legal infractions, and for deceiving constituents and election officials in New York’s Third Congressional District. Last May a U.S. District Court indicted Santos for money laundering and wire fraud, soon adding 23 counts, including charging $44,000 on credit cards funded by campaign contributors. His guilty plea will require financial restitution involving hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he could spend up to eight years in prison.
As is now well known, Santos fabricated most of his biography while courting friends within the Republican Party on Long Island, winning their endorsement and defeating Representative Rob Zimmerman in November of 2022. He won that election in a virtual news blackout that kept his checkered past away from the public: this, in the media capital of the nation with multiple newspapers. Only after his malfeasance became known was he expelled from the House in December of 2023.
My interest here is less about Santos and more about the troubling fact that the 4th wealthiest congressional district in the United States could elect a bad imitation of Zelig as their representative. Where was the due diligence of journalists, party leaders and the public who should have quickly flagged Santos as a not-very-sophisticated phony? The New York Times began to examine the false claims of wealth and a suspicious resume in December, after he was elected. They were well behind the tiny North Shore Leader in the district that correctly reported before the election that Santos “boasts like an insecure child, but he’s most likely just a fabulist, a fake.”
The paper usually endorsed Republicans, but opted for Zimmerman that year. Why had the media center of the nation with many news outlets not bothered to examine the fraudulent Trump acolyte right under their noses? It was not because he was engaged in a sophisticated ruse. Among many other lies, Santos claimed that he was a summa cum laude graduate of Baruch College, received an MBA from New York University, and worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs: all not true and easily checked. Santos’ hostility to LGBQ rights also rang false when someone discovered that he once performed in Brazilian drag performances: not itself disqualifying, but out-of-sync with the image he projected to voters. A district with an average household income in six digits surely had the resources to raise questions about his credibility. Upper crust heirs of the Van Cortlands, Roosevelts, and Clintons were complicit.
It would be foolish to assume that Santos was the rare solitary candidate to have skated on the thin ice of lies and deceptions. His case is just one of many “Strange but True” stories about American politicians that keep much of the rest of the world alternately entertained and alarmed. Even while there have been wonderful members in both bodies of the Congress, the case is a reminder that Americans with all the advantages of life may still be too bored or distracted to apply even elemental standards of character to determine a candidate’s veracity. If most of the folks in the 3rd District of New York were blind to who their representatives are, what hope is there for smaller districts with practically no news-gathering resources? For that matter, should we worry about whether enough Americans are discerning enough to see red flags in a current crop of presidential candidates, including one who inexplicably left the carcass of a bear cub in Central Park, and another who is facing jail time for a number of felonies?
