The Santos Delusion
A saga ends
I’ll be honest—I never cared that much about the George Santos saga. It was amusing and strange and emblematic of something singularly American—a longing for reinvention that devolved into shameless lying—but low stakes in so many ways. Perhaps that’s why it was fun. For me, it was a reminder that individual members of Congress don’t matter much. One of the more notable features of our political scene is just how coveted these 435 seats are. There are men and women across America sweating it out in staff offices and lobbying shops and state legislatures who would launch their own family members into the sun to get elected to Congress. Congress is the Major Leagues, the ultimate aliyah, a way to tell yourself, in your darkest hours, your life mattered; you’re almost certain to have a New York Times obituary. And Santos, for a brief time, got it: he was elected to the United States Congress from New York, something countless state legislators and city council members will never, ever achieve.
Achieve what? No position in American politics today has a greater mismatch between prestige and power. Presidents, governors, mayors, and even county executives can do things. Eric Adams gets to lord over a $100 billion municipal budget. Gretchen Whitmer gets to decide how much money is pumped into the public schools of Michigan. Ron DeSantis is still the guy to call if a hurricane batters Florida. In the House of Representatives, unless you’re the speaker or a top lieutenant, your tangible power is almost nonexistent. This is especially true if you are in the minority, but committee chairmanships in the majority have never meant less. The end of pork barrel legislating means an individual lawmaker can’t hang around for 30 years and easily funnel goodies like new parks and bridges back home. The nationalization of our politics has made the House more coveted than ever because you can truly get famous there. Brian Kemp and Kathy Hochul have far more to say about the direction of Georgia and New York than Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but we know who the real celebrities are. Sitting in Congress permits you to feasibly have an opinion on everything. You’re one measly vote and can’t bring peace to the Middle East, but we naturally have to care about what you think about Israel.
Santos, for all the press coverage he drew, was one vote. Donald Trump, at least, was president. Santos mattered as far as the slim Republican majority, but even then, they could have their majority without him. Kevin McCarthy seemed reluctant to expel Santos because he was a reliable Republican vote who ultimately backed him for speaker. Mike Johnson, after the release of the ethics report, seemed to bow to pressure from the moderates in the New York swing districts who desperately wanted Santos gone. A few far-right Republicans grumbled; hadn’t Santos, despite his fraudulence, flipped a reliably Democratic district on Long Island? Isn’t this guy useful? In the end, the federal indictment and the obvious fraud proved too much to bear. Or, perhaps, as Josh Barro has argued, Santos was just too camp for the Republicans.
What I found most amusing about all of this is that there are political downsides for Democrats and Republicans alike to expelling Santos. There’s a reason, when the furor dies down, both sides can only celebrate so much.