Last week in American politics was, in a word, troubling.
New York Mayor Eric Adams was indicted and arrested on charges of public corruption, foreign campaign influence, wire fraud and bribery. North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is the state’s Republican nominee for governor, was accused of making sexually explicit and racially incendiary comments online, leading to mass resignations from the lieutenant governor’s office and his campaign staff.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
And New Yorker magazine writer Olivia Nuzzi was suspended for allegedly having a personal relationship with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
This might seem like nothing new in politics, but I think it is disturbingly new. Yes, we all know the stories of John F. Kennedy’s sexual peccadilloes and legendary womanizing while in the White House. We know about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. We can go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson, if we want and the then-salacious allegations about his moral character and fathering illegitimate children with the enslaved Sally Hemings. President Franklin Roosevelt had a long emotional affair with his wife’s former secretary, Lucy Mercer. We know that President Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign for his unlawful actions while in office. Had he not been pardoned by President Gerald Ford, he likely would have been criminally prosecuted. But something is deeply amiss with our leaders now. They are angry and shrill, and their attacks are more indecent and personal.
That brings us full circle to former President Donald Trump and his pending federal indictments for actions after he left the White House in 2021 and his many accusations of sexual assault, his alleged philandering and his endless grifting and fraudulent business practices.
Political scandals, obviously, are nothing new, but something feels darker in our politics now. We seem to have stopped holding political leaders and candidates to a higher standard. There is a level of vitriol, hatred even, that transcends anything we’ve seen. The bandage has ripped off some of our oldest wounds and those wounds have come to the surface.
Consider the X post by Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., about Haitian immigrants last week. Higgins called Haitians “thugs,” called Haiti the “nastiest country in the western hemisphere” and repeated overtly racist claims made by Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, about pet-eating. He deleted the post, but he didn’t apologize.
Decency simply doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It’s all clicks and headlines. And the rest of us feel defeated. What happened to our public officials? And why do these people, seeking power and money, win?
What is the line of morality and character that our public leaders should meet in the 21st century? Is there no longer such a line? To that, I do not have an answer. But it keeps me awake at night. I know good people who would make good public servants who simply do not want to run for office because of the dangerous place it has become. Consider my fellow columnist and former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan. He and his family were threatened with violence because he would not violate his oath of office to help “find votes” after Trump lost the state in 2020.
That behavior very clearly diminishes the pool of public servants. You can’t blame a person for refusing to run for office knowing full well that he or she would likely be viciously attacked and that any skeletons would be laid bare, that any misstep would be magnified and distorted.
Vice President Kamala Harris was asked in a recent interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle if she can be trusted. Harris replied, “Yes. Yes. I am not perfect, but I will tell you, I’m always going to put the needs of the people first.” Maybe that is where we begin. We stop expecting people to be perfect and instead give them the grace to be honest. We start encouraging people to serve in public office and the public sector again by modeling humanity and calling them to a higher purpose, like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address after the Civil War or JFKS’s vision to put a man on the moon, or former President Barack Obama’s audacity of hope. Harris seems to be offering “joy” in a time of such joylessness.
But she cannot do this alone. We must step up and step into the civic arena. We do not have to wallow in the mud, go after people’s children or threaten elected officials when we disagree in the public square. The future of this great republic depends on our ability and our willingness to restore basic standards of respect and decency in public service. We need a better way forward, and we need it now.
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