Is It Too Much to Ask That We Elect Decent Human Beings?

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?” --Joseph Welch, United States Senate Hearings, 1954

Truth be told he was kind of a nerd. 

Black rim glasses framed an unremarkable face and a head topped with a shock of shaggy white hair, and ears that stood out.  He spoke with an earnestness that today might be mocked as pollyannish. But he was one of the most decent, honest, and competent public servants I’d ever met and heard speak and so I cast my vote for him in my very first presidential election, in November of 1980.

His name was John Anderson, a name, and a man whose story is now mostly lost to history.

In 1980 many Democrats and political liberals and moderates just could not get excited about a second term for President Jimmy Carter nor a first term for Ronald Regan. As the pundits exclaimed then, who’d elect an ex-actor President? Anderson ran in the Republican primaries but didn’t gain traction. Yet he so wanted to serve his country with his mixture of homespun Midwest politics, pragmatic ideology, and a college professor persona. Hence the nerdiness. He was also known as incorruptible and a person of character and integrity.  Back then that actually meant something when it came to running for office. 

Candidates were at least expected to be, or at least act, like decent human beings.

As an idealistic nineteen-year-old and political science major at the University of Massachusetts, I so wanted to find a candidate I could believe in, whose campaign I could volunteer for. That’s why I fell for John Anderson. I helped to organize his fall 1980 visit to our campus and on the first Tuesday in November of that year I walked into a voting booth in Amherst and cast “yes” for the first time for a commander in chief. 

Anderson lost, coming in third and garnering 6.6 percent of the national vote. Later analysis showed he’d taken votes away equally from both major party candidates.  Anderson then went on to teach political science and American studies at many colleges and universities, including my alma mater.  He continued to work for civic engagement and as a public servant until his death in 2017 at 95.

I wonder if Anderson would have been even a blip on the current political stage if a person like him decided to run for President or Congress or local office in 2022.  His credentials as an essentially decent human, one not in politics for self alone, nor a rabid ideologue; these days, that does not seem to be important to many of my fellow Americans. And that is a real shame.

Instead, we elected an ego driven, philandering, failed casino mogul, reality TV star and real estate developer and we may do so again. We run candidates that lie and then lie about lying and then lie about lying about lying.  The nastier the rhetoric of a candidate in many places the better it would seem, for more votes. Or consider the many candidates in this election who outright deny that the 2020 election was fair and square and legitimate. These election deniers who continue to believe their own delusional rhetoric have already won 161 races nationwide.  What other truths will they deny? The roundness of the earth?

Where have you gone John Anderson?

Or Charlie Baker—there’s someone I will absolutely miss as will millions of other folks in the Bay State. Charlie was not perfect as a governor, made his mistakes, but he never an ideologue. He was not in the work of government for his own power or ego or for the money. He was a policy nerd.  Wanted to get things done. Watching him campaign he looked like he was suffering through a root canal. During the worst of COVID Baker stood up every day before the cameras and answered all the questions with calm, competence, and steady leadership. 

He was a decent human being, a person of character who stepped up to lead and now he returns to the life of an ordinary citizen.  If only we could get our reps and senators in Washington to do the same. They get elected and never leave. At present members of the House of Representatives have served on average for 8.9 years and counting, with Senators clocking in at 11 years and counting. That’s the highest number ever since 1789. And when most of them finally do leave Congress, they slide right into even more lucrative work as lobbyists or corporate board members or overpaid public speakers.

Here's one truth we can’t deny. The essential decency of the people who lead us (or the lack of essential decency) reflect who we have become as a country. I know as a person of faith, I want the person who speaks for me to be kind and merciful, to seek to understand others and be open to working with the opponent across the aisle. I’d like a leader who I trust to be honest and moral.  

Is that too much to ask? In 2022, maybe. Or perhaps it is time for more and more of us to demand decency in our politicians or maybe even have the courage to run for office ourselves.

Have we no decency? God, I hope we still do. I really, really do.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.