Well, Kevin McCarthy is finally gone.
And not one moment too early.
In fact, actually, ten months too late.
He never should have been elected in the first place. Because a position of trust at the highest levels of government is that last place a man should be whose acquaintance with the truth is coincidental at best, and entirely ephemeral at worst.
In short, Mr. McCarthy, as the late, great Christopher Hitchens said of Bill Clinton, “Lied and he lied and he lied, until he had no one left to lie to.”
And Kevin, like Bill, would even lie about his lies.
McCarthy reminded me of a boyhood friend of mine many moons ago back on the mean streets of Baltimore City.
William (we will call him, though that was not his name) lied about everything. Even when it didn’t matter, William lied.
If the sun was shining, William would say it was raining. If a torrential rain was falling, William would say it was bright and sunny. He would say Christmas was Easter, and Easter was Christmas. Because to William, it was always April Fools Day.
I well remember one day overhearing a conversation my dad was having with the high school principal. The principal said, “I had William in the office today. We had caught him in yet another lie. And when I said, ‘You’re quite a little liar, aren't you, William,’ he replied with a smile, ‘Yes sir, I am.’”
And frankly, with that single truth, William put himself one step above Kevin McCarthy on the stairway to veracity.
You see, when Kevin McCarthy is caught in an obvious lie – whether it is about a vote he has cast, a bill he has sponsored, or a shifty maneuver he has executed, he doesn’t simply have the common decency to plead mea culpa as William did.
McCarthy starts yammering about “nuances,” and “misconceptions” and, of course, the old political catch-all cop-out, the need for “governance” (a synonym for chicanery), as in his parting statement yesterday after he was finally, at long last, expelled from the Speaker’s seat he should never have occupied:
“I don’t regret standing up for choosing governance over grievance.”
Puh-leeze!!!
In other words, “Yep, I rubber-stamped Toxic Joe’s destructive leftwing policies at every turn. Even after I promised every patriotic American I wouldn’t. Even after I swore to my Republican House colleagues I would never, ever do such a thing. Even after I took an oath of office to be faithful to my word.”
In short, Kevin McCarthy was a lying sell-out.
Which is why he has now been told to get out.
I honestly wish I could say that Washington corrupted Kevin McCarthy. Something I have seen happen to hundreds and hundreds of politicians in my 40 years plus inside the Washington beltway.
I really do.
I wish he was like President John Kennedy described several of his more corrupt Senate colleagues: “They came to do good – and they stayed to do well.”
But, the truth (there’s that bothersome word again) is that Washington did not corrupt Kevin McCarthy. If anything, Kevin McCarthy corrupted Washington.
Amazingly enough.
I was reminded of this yesterday at lunch with a longtime political operative friend of mine. One of the best in the business. A man who has known McCarthy for decades.
“Kevin,” my friend reminded me, “has been an inveterate liar since his days in the California State Assembly. To him, it is just a way of life.”
Now, thank God in heaven, it has become a way of political death.
And one is reminded of Oliver Cromwell’s castigation of the corrupt politicians as he dissolved the Rump Parliament in 1653. To lying Kevin McCarthy we say:
“It is high time to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.
“Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
“I command ye to depart immediately out of this place. Ye shall now give way to better men.
“In the name of God, go!”
Enough said.
