Tick-A-Box Candidate Made Up Every Box

The perfect candidate for a society in which identity trumps ideas

He’s an uneducated narcissist in a very casual relationship with reality - George Santos should make an excellent politician .

Santos is the Republican congressman-elect who has this weekend sensationally admitted to making up his entire life story in order to win election.

Despite confessing that almost nothing about his resume was true, he insists he fully intends to serve as a “successful” congressman.

And why not?

Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed for years to be a Native American despite the fact she was nothing of the sort. Pocahontas, as Trump took to calling her, continues to serve with Biden’s support.

And closer to home, Anthony Albanese told voters he was an economics policy advisor to former PM Bob Hawke when, in actual fact, he worked as a research officer for an MP who never served in the Hawke cabinet and who never held a role in forming economic policy.

But those examples are amateur hour compared to Santos who clearly played by the old adage, if you’re going to swing, swing for the fences.

Santos had claimed in the lead up to the election that he worked for two Wall Street banks. He did not.

He claimed he had graduated from university. He had not.

He claimed he established an animal rescue shelter. He did no such thing.

He claimed his grandparents were Jewish survivors of the holocaust. Santos now says he never claimed to be a Jew. He is a Catholic who claimed to be “Jew-ISH” with the emphasis on “ish”!

He claimed he was gay. Turns out he was married to a woman up until three years ago. He now claims “people change”.

But honestly, who can say that none of it is true. It was clearly “his truth”.

In a post-truth world it’s really only the vibe that matters, surely.

And besides, if a man can identify as a woman, and if a white caucasian can identify as indigenous, why can’t a straight, uneducated gentile with no pets and zero business experience identify as a gay Jewish university graduate who runs an animal shelter in between making deals on Wall Street?

If we are going to allow people to self identify as one of 72 genders, we can hardly complain when we are conned by the likes of Santos since that would mean admitting there is indeed such a thing as objective truth.

Or maybe there’s another lesson here.

This is what happens when politics becomes a contest of identities instead of ideas.

Santos prised New York’s third congressional district away from the Democrats to help give the Republicans a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.

While his actions were obviously deceitful and wrong, you have to marvel at the tick a box adjectives that made him attractive to Democrat voters.

Santos apologised for making up his entire life but insisted …

“This will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be good … My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry.”