George Santos (R‑Neverland) is, at the time of this writing, still a member of Congress and determined to continue being so. Santos—or perhaps his name is Anthony Devolder; even that’s up for question—won a seat in Congress last fall and almost immediately afterward was discovered to have made up nearly every bit of personal history he campaigned on.For instance: He said he had degrees from Baruch College and New York University, but neither school has record that he was ever a student. He said he worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but neither firm has record that he worked there. He claimed to have founded a charity for pets, but no benefactors have been found and the donated money seems to have disappeared. He claimed he was of Jewish ancestry but now says he’s only “Jew‐ish.” He said his mother died of an illness related to the 9/11 attack, but she apparently hadn’t been to the United States since 1999. He said … well, you’ve been reading the papers.I’d say you can’t make this stuff up, but clearly you can.The saga has been great fodder for the late‐night shows. And it’s tempting to dismiss Santos, er Devolder—whomever—as just an extreme joke version of the lying politician.And that has me thinking about public choice theory.Public choice says that government officials—whether elected, appointed, or humble bureaucrats—are as self‐interested as their private sector counterparts. That doesn’t make them necessarily good or evil, but only as flawed as the rest of us. And in Santos’s case, that would be among the most flawed of us.
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- United States of America
