Can you imagine working for this organisation? It has fewer than 600 employees with the following statistics:
29 have been accused of spousal abuse.
7 have been arrested for fraud.
19 have been accused of writing bad cheques.
117 have bankrupted at least two businesses.
3 have been arrested for assault.
71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit.
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges.
8 have been arrested for shoplifting.
21 are current defendants in lawsuits.
84 were stopped for drink-driving in 1998 alone.
Can you guess which organisation this is? Give up? It's the 535 members of the United States Congress.
This little gem was sent by a priest friend of mine. He'd come across the information on the Internet, so, as with everything else from that source, cyberspace I mean, it should not be treated as gospel. What is really worrying is not whether it is absolutely accurate, but that people want it to be true. It is both horrifying and completely believable, and reinforces most people's conviction that politicians are the dregs rather than the cream.
But these people have been elected. People went out and voted for them. Why? The obvious answer, that their electoral opponents were even worse, is a tempting conclusion but false. What is happening in politics is stranger and, again, the US is providing the evidence.
They're about a year into the mammoth process of electing their president.
Currently, the Democrats and the Republicans are choosing their nominees and one of the first things all the candidates did was to admit everything they had done in the past. They have been falling over themselves to fall on swords.
"Yep, I smoked marijuana and I inhaled."
"Cocaine? Did some in my youth."
"Unfaithful? Guilty as charged."
The surprise package of the campaigns, if you discount Al Gore's Pinocchio-style switch from block of wood to virile frontrunner for the Democrats, is John McCain. His life-story is stranger than fiction - young hell-raiser turned war hero, turned senator, turned presidential hopeful. He has, nonetheless, made sure he told everyone, up front, about his philandering, his errors of judgment in relation to his association with a collapsed savings and loan enterprise, and his bad temper.
He has even turned the story of his Vietnam war exploits into a confession. He refers regularly to his feelings of guilt about his capitulation after five years of torture.
It is on this area alone that any sort of excuse is offered - and never by the candidate himself. His staff has very cleverly used an image that seems to have been fed to every political profile writer. Almost every article detailing his life mentions the fact he can't comb his own hair because he can no longer raise his arms over his head on account of the beatings meted out to him while a captive at the "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam war. Implicit in that picture is the point that he took an incredible amount of pain and humiliation before breaking, more than you or I could have.
George Bush jnr, his opponent, has also trotted his own skeletons out of their cupboards. But so far, McCain has defied the odds and the received wisdom that the former president's son is a shoo-in for the nomination.
So what else has McCain done to give him the advantage over Bush?
Both have engaged in the customary negative campaigns. Granted, neither side has been able to make capital out of its opponent's chequered pasts, but both have done their best to convince voters that plumping for the other guy will bring ruin. Both have been guilty of picking elements of the other's policies and simplifying them into claims that your home, family, job and lifestyle will be forfeit should you vote for the other candidate.
However, given that both candidates represent the same party and, consequently, the same political philosophy, areas of differentiation are limited and subtle. The scare tactics certainly affect some voters, but not enough to cause the huge swings required to get McCain ahead in the polls, particularly as Bush has about twice as much to spend on his campaign television advertisements.
So that leaves the one other major difference between the two men. John McCain is far more interesting. Being dull in politics nowadays is a serious problem. Once the campaigns got into full swing, the first major candidate to withdraw was Steve Forbes. The people were just plain bored with him. He'd been involved in nomination campaigns before and did reasonably well, but by 2000 the voters were used to seeing multi-millionaires tilting at the White House and his novelty value had worn off. With no other points of interest to offer, he suffered badly from voter disinterest.
McCain could never be accused of dullness. The admissions he made at the outset have turned him into a genuinely interesting character. He's colourful, aggressive, flawed - and human. Of the four leading candidates - himself, Bush, Gore, Bradley - he's probably the only one you'd want to get trapped in a lift with.
One more thing. If you are a saint you may be in bigger trouble than the sinners. The saints just aren't plausible any more. If you are a Hell's Angel, claiming a keen interest in topiary is unlikely to be believed, even if it's entirely true. The same applies to politicians. It is now assumed you are, or at least were, a crook. What the voters are waiting for is for you to tell them what you did wrong, wring your hands a little about it and then keep your nose clean. Unfortunately, not having anything to confess is likely to lead the voters to assume that you are lying, rather than that you are without blame.
What are the implications of this shift in the way politics is conducted for Ireland? Most of our politicians fall into the "saints" category. They are hard-working people who are clear that their job is to represent the views of their constituents. Whether, and how, they adapt to an electorate that is increasingly unwilling to accept these facts is not clear. The only change we can be certain of is that any that do have skeletons in the cupboard - and have not told the voters - will suffer.