Stop pretending that you know a politician's character

Does character matter when we choose our leaders?  Of course it matters.  The problem is that we delude ourselves into thinking that we know far more about a politician's character than is possible to know.   

Is there anything your close friends know about your character that, say, your boss and coworkers don't know? 

Is there anything your best friend knows about you that your family doesn't know? 

Maybe there's even something no one realizes about you?...

Yes? Then how can you believe that you truly know the character of any major American politician, the most stage-managed motherfucker in humanity's long and illustrious history of spewing self-serving bullshit for the purpose of currying advantage with others? 

It's not that it's impossible to know anything of a politician's character, it's just that it's not to be learned in the places where we look for it.  Do you really think that a preplanned photo opp at a church or the number of times a politician says "family values" tells you anything about his character?  

Want to know something about Newt Gingrich?  What does his cheating on his wife as he lambasted Clinton for the Lewinsky affair tell you?  Perhaps that he's a shameless hypocrite?....What do his present denials of the significance of it tell you? You don't have to be a psychologist to recognize the telltale signs of a narcissist. 

Want to know something about Barack Obama's character?  What can be learned from his praise of "the power of human dignity"  in response to the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt while he largely remained mum on the violent suppression of the uprising in Bahrain (where it just so happens that the US Fifth Fleet is based)?  Perhaps that he's just as shrewd and cynical as any other politician who has ever reached the apex of power? 

Yet still, I don't claim to know the character of either of these men.  (Politicians are as multidimensional as the rest of us....Why do we think we can meaningfully distill them down to one or two anecdotes?) I simply mean to point out that there are sources of deeper insight into a politician's character than the superficial and often contrived indicators upon which American voters fixate.  We love to remind each other that "actions speak louder than words," yet we seem to forget this when it's time to read between the lines of politicians' platitudes. 

Picking leaders from among a pool of candidates we don't know personally is always going to be a messy process fraught with uncertainty, and from time to time we're going to make misjudgments that we have to wait until the next election to correct.  But that doesn't mean we can't be a bit more savvy and realistic in how we approach it. 

As long as American voters remain shallow and uncritical in their understanding of who politicians are (and most everything else in the fucking universe), the debate over character will continue to repeat itself according to the same hollow script. 

And we'll continue to get the leaders we deserve.