“HIS LIPS ARE MOVING”

1/10/10

I wrote the following to Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times in response to his 1/10/10 column regarding Pat Quinn’s apparent pandering to Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Mark’s disappointment in both Pat Quinn and Dan Hynes. I thought my readers might enjoy it:

Hi Mark,

You’re too nice a guy.

In today’s column, you explain that both Dan Hynes and Pat Quinn (no relation) have disappointed you and how they may not be “honest, earnest, and conscientious public servants. Nice guys, too.” In this specific instance, the occasions for your disappointment are Quinn’s kowtowing to Representative Jesse Jackson (with what looks to be at least scores of millions of taxpayer money for various south suburban capital projects), Quinn’s “hanging his state prison director out to dry for his (Quinn’s) own bungling of a prisoner early release program,” and Hynes’ “exploiting it (the prisoner release program) for fear-mongering”.

In explaining your disappointment, you were doing fine when you said that the “…part I overlooked (about Quinn and Hynes) is that, first and foremost, they are both politicians…” If you had quit there, you would have been correct, but then you said “…and politics demands a certain amount of expediency,” thereby at least partially exonerating Messrs. Quinn and Hynes by excusing their frequent shading of the truth and visits to moral gray areas as mere imperatives of their profession.

You would have done better if you had said that they are both politicians and, as such, they lie and pander reflexively. A politicians lies and panders both because doing so comes more naturally than telling the truth and standing on principle and because, in the politician’s perverted moral system, lying is less of a moral fault than having the electorate face the heavy burden of enduring life bereft of his enlightened leadership.

Face it, Mark; politicians, even those who trumpet their honesty and reform minded nature, are liars because they have lied so long that they fail to recognize the truth, or at least the value of the truth relative to the value of prolonging their tenure at the public trough.

I’m not saying Messrs. Quinn and Hynes are not “nice guys”, as you put it. I don’t know Hynes, but I used to know his dad and he’s a nice guy. I’ve met Pat Quinn on a few occasions and he’s a nice guy. You and I both know a lot of politicians. I think you’ll agree that very few of them are not nice guys. Part of their job description is “nice guy.” People don’t vote for misanthropes. But being a “nice guy” does not say anything about one’s moral code and what naked ambition can do to twist and pervert it so that it no longer resembles the average person’s conception of right and wrong.