Have You No Sense Of Decency?

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The U.S. has entered an era of post-shame politics, where politicians are willing to endure embarrassment, criticism and negative attention in order to survive scandals. We talk about the modern history of politicians weathering controversy — from Bill Clinton to embattled Republican Rep. George Santos.

This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving.

This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Michael Summers, a 72-year-old retired school teacher from the Halem Oregon.
0:06.1	When COVID started, my red-heeler dog, Squishy and I started walking and we're about to go out
0:12.5	and hit our 2,000th mile mark. Wow. This show was recorded at 109 pm on Tuesday, February 21st, 2023.
0:22.0	Things may have changed, but at the time you hear this, but Squishy and I will still be walking
0:26.8	the beautiful Northwest. Enjoy the show. We will.
0:35.3	Squishy is a superb dog. Top 5 dog name. That's awesome. That's a wonderful
0:41.0	machine. I don't even want to know the history of why the name that does.
0:44.5	I'd probably do that with story. Hey there, it's the Ampure Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks.
0:49.7	I cover voting. I'm Tamer Geeth. I cover the White House. I'm Ron Elving, Editor Correspondent.
0:54.4	And today on the show we are talking about shame or should I say the lack thereof shame in the political world.
1:01.8	Tam, this is something you've been reporting a lot on in recent weeks. Why? Why now?
1:07.4	The inspiration comes from Congressman George Santos from Long Island, New York, who lied about
1:14.5	almost every major plot point in his life, including such things as being Jewish or having his mom
1:22.0	die on 9-11. And that led me to pause the question, is this a new era in politics? Are we in a
1:30.0	post-shame era of American politics where you can just put your head down and power through and say
1:37.0	the media sucks and I'm going to stay. Yeah. And Santos obviously is an extreme example of this,
1:44.7	but he's not the first example. Ron, can you kind of trace back when this era of post-shame
1:50.9	politics really began? I would say one clear demarcation point would be Bill Clinton's candidacy
1:57.2	for President in 1992 when he was hit with a couple of torpedoes of womanizing and accusations
2:03.6	of draft dodging that would have killed anybody else that we had ever seen running for President
2:09.6	in the past. And he toughed it out and did well on New Hampshire and just kept right on going.
2:13.9	And that's not to mention the fact that he was impeached in his second term for having had an
	...

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