Leave ‘the American People’ Alone

In the Chicago where I grew up, all politicians were guilty until proven innocent, and few were ever proved innocent. I remember my father telling me that a seat on the Chicago City Council paid $20,000 a year, yet politicians spent as much as a quarter-million dollars to get one. “Doesn’t make sense,” my father would say, in a voice of comic naiveté, “just doesn’t make sense.”

There are ways to scope out the falsity of politicians—viewing the contradictions or simple selfishness in their voting records; discovering their net worth. I have come upon another. You can tell how phony a politician is by how often he uses the term “the American people.”