True Congressional Confessions

In today’s Politico, Amy Doolittle has a light-hearted story on the tours that Members of Congress occasionally give for constituents around the Capitol. A handful of congressmen are known to be frequent guides, taking over a job generally relegated to the lowest of low-level staffers. Part way through the piece, though, we find a dark confession by Utah Republican Rob Bishop:

I find that if you say something with enough fervor, anyone will believe it, so I do that. Trying to find what the true bits are as opposed to the false bits, it’s kind of part of the fun of it all.

As with Capitol tours, so it is with representative democracy. If our elected leaders always told us the truth about what they were doing, what fun would that be? After all, that’s one of the main reaosns we think tank people are here for.