Anyone who is interested in good government in this country would tell you to pay attention to what’s happening during political campaigns, and I am no exception. But I would add a caveat to that warning: Yes, you want to pay attention, but you also want to be careful about believing what you hear.
I am certainly not the first person to have to deal with this, and I surely won’t be the last, but I am in a good position to tell you that those with no scruples can put almost any notion out there about you. And once it’s “out there,” it tends to be able to live forever even if it’s completely false.
This past weekend, I spoke at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. Now it has been more than two years since I was a candidate for anything, and I said nothing about my future except that whatever God tells me to do, I will do. Many of you have probably said the same thing, and no one thought you were hinting about running for president. But you weren’t talking to political pundits. I wasn’t trying to either, but I couldn’t stop them from listening.
So a bunch of pundits wrote about this comment and harkened back to my presidential campaign – and in one case, the writer made the claim that I had been accused of having two affairs. I will not link to the column because I don’t want to drive traffic to it. But I do want to say this about it:
First of all,
as I’ve already told you, I didn’t do that and I didn’t do any of the other B.S. they accused me of. But having said that, this guy didn’t even get the B.S. accusation right. It seems idiotic for me to correct him, as if to say, “No, the accusation was actually this,” when the accusation itself was a lie.
But the larger point is that once this nonsense gets “out there,” it takes on a life of its own and people who like the idea of it being true will keep repeating it no matter what the actual facts really are. And because none of it is fact-based in the first place, there’s no reason some other chucklehead shouldn’t come up with his own take on it.
It was two affairs! It was ten affairs! Cain had a harem!
What difference does it make? Since it’s all fiction in the first place, why bother fact-checking it? Just say whatever B.S. you want to say, and if someone calls you on it, just say, “Well, I’m just repeating the talk that’s out there.”
Something similar, if not as high-profile, happened again over the course of these past few weeks. I have given some support to a candidate named David Perdue in the U.S. Senate primary in Georgia, and one of his primary opponents was former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel. The week before last, an official from Handel’s campaign tweeted that he wondered how much Perdue was paying me to support him. The basis for this? Nothing whatsoever. He just felt like saying it so he did.
It actually prompted a reporter from the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution to call me to see if I would comment on whether it was true, and I said, “Not just no, but hell no.” This, of course, did not stop some guy from calling my office and informing my executive assistant Lisa Reichert that he had “proof” Perdue is paying me.
I don’t think I have ever heard Lisa laugh so hard, and I eagerly await this gentleman’s response to her having told him, “Let’s see it, buddy.”
But you know what? It scarcely matters, at least in the minds of some people. It’s now “out there” and for those who want to believe it, that’s all that’s necessary.
This goes on almost everywhere in politics. In Oregon, a respected pediatrician named Monica Wehby is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, and recently a scummy Democrat operative came out with some nonsense accusing her of stalking someone she’d had a relationship with.
Dan told you recently what nonsense this character assassination campaign is, but do you think the facts will matter to Democrats looking to take her down?
I’m sure many pundits and political operatives will read this and roll their eyes, saying, “Politics ain’t beanbag, pal! If you can’t stand the heat . . .” and so on and so on. And yes, I know that’s how they think, and that’s part of the problem. This is how we choose our leaders in this nation? This is how much we value truth?
And why do we look to such operatives as authorities on the subject when often they’re the ones who are dropping this innuendo and seeking to destroy people with total lies just so their guy can win? Are these really people in whom we want to invest moral authority?
So pay attention, but be discerning about what you hear. I know it’s a lot more work to sift through the nonsense and identify the real facts. But it’s for the good of the nation that we do it, so it’s worth the effort.
