What's the point of George Santos?

14 February 2023

Can you imagine getting told off by Mitt Romney? Can you imagine Mitt Romney telling you off, and then all the people were like, Oh snap!

Me neither.

Romney's infamous for being a prude. He won'y swear, for instance. He scowls at swearing. He's offended. The most he'll say is H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

Yet when he bumped into New York Congressman George Santos during last week's State of the Union address, TV cameras caught a side of Romney no one saw before. Whoa, Mitt's face is really red! Did he just cuss out Santos?

Holy H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks!

Turns out no, Mitt Romney did not cuss out Santos. Unless by cussing out we mean in the mittest way Mitt ever mitted. Congressional reporters quickly pieced the scene together. Romney had told Santos, "You don’t belong here."

Now, you gotta understand. Here’s Mitt Romney, the milquetoastiest of all milquetoast men from the great state of Milquetoast whose habitual preciousness is so aggressive people fear saying hell in front of him, telling Santos, directly and without a coat of varnish, that he doesn’t belong.

That's as close as we're ever going to see Senator Romney get to discovering his inner-Jules Winnfield: "Honor, motherfucker, do you have it?"

What's the point of George Santos?

I'm not going to recount Santos' lies. (The Post's fact-fetishing majordomo, Glenn Kessler, can wear himself out doing that if he wants to.) Recounting them lends greater credence to the figment of fugacity that is the Long Island congressman than that fugacious figment deserves. So I won't.

I do want to point out something about him I haven't pointed out. In the world of Washington Realpolitik, in which morality is an afterthought, there are people you respect. There are people you fear. There are people you fear as well as respect on account fearing them invokes a special kind of respect.

There's one. There's the other. There's both.

But there's rarely neither.

Only a special kind of terrible can inspire neither. And remember, this is Washington. You can't throw a stone without hitting a special kind of terrible.

No one respects Santos, not even Republican voters back home.

No one fears him, not even the House speaker who needs his vote.

Kevin McCarthy can't afford losing a vote. Yet he has nothing to fear from George Santos. Where's he going to go? Who doesn't think he's toxic?

Nowhere. No one.

If Santos were like the Democrats' Joe Manchin, he'd capitalize on his position. He'd flex his power. But Manchin is respected. He's feared. He's respected because he's feared. What does Santos have that people want?

Imagine being worth less than your lies.

That'd be like imagining Mitt saying H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

Santos is a special kind of terrible – a politician without a base of power beneath him, scarcely a politician at all. What are sellers without buyers, shepherds without flocks, pop stars without fans? What would the point be?

What's the point of George Santos?

Lies canceling the liar

I doubt he knows.

He is whatever he thinks the person in front of him wants him to be. He's a blank, a cipher, a fetish. A there that's not there. George Santos is never George Santos. George Santos is always already someone, something else.

Mitt Romney is many things – former Republican presidential nominee, former Republican standard bearer, prude – but he's never someone, something else. He knows who he is. He knows why. His capacity for lying is legendary. (Just google "the mendacity of Mitt.") But he's always George Romney’s son. There's a there there. The lies never canceled the liar.

Romney is the lone GOP senator who, at the end of his first impeachment trial, voted to remove Donald Trump. That cost him respect, but it gained him fear. Here was a brave Republican among cowardly Republicans. Utah's other senator, Mike Lee, showed no such courage. He voted to acquit.

Lee was respected, but never feared, never respected because feared.

The House Republicans were set to denounce the president for his handling of a Chinese spy balloon that floated over the continental US before being shot down last week by the US Air Force. But then Mitt Romney spoke.

"I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care," he told reporters after being briefed.

According to CNN's Rich Galant, "House Republicans, who were initially planning a resolution condemning the Biden administration for not bringing down the balloon sooner, switched the wording to condemn the government of China for sending the craft over US territory in the first place."

Can you imagine anyone changing their minds, much less Republican anarchists in the House, after George Santos told them what he thinks?

All he can do is self-own

No one respects him. No one fears him. No one respects him, because no one fears him. Washington is full of liars. It's full of special kinds of terrible. Yet Santos can't get either. He's the especialest kind of special kind of terrible.

The thing about being a strong absence is that eventually, you're going to be canceled by a strong presence. Matter of fact, that strong presence doesn't have to be that strong. A strong absence can be canceled even by a prude whose back goes up at the sound of the word H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

He can't own anyone the way Romney owned him. The only thing he can do is double down on denying being humiliated. If he were Jewish, instead of "Jew-ish," he might know the meaning of putz. He isn't, though. He doesn't.

All he can do is self-own.

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