There’s a scene from the film The King’s Speech where Colin Firth’s George VI insists that he has stammered all his life. Geoffrey Rush, as speech therapist Lionel Logue, tells him that’s impossible, as babies don’t stammer. George VI then admits that he was told he began stammering when he was a few years old, but did not have an impediment as a newborn.
I’ll set aside the field of speech therapy, and consider the film’s exchange more broadly. There’s a lesson in this for our politics – although there is a human nature common to most, many of the political mistakes we make are social rather than natural. One can acquire the wrong habits, just as one can be taught the right ones. It’s not inevitable that a political culture will go bad.
When it does go bad, however, people may mistakenly believe the deficiencies in their politics are natural, inevitable, and irremediable. Some few may, in fact, be naturally corrupt, but that’s nearly impossible to tell (and might make no difference even if one could tell). A handful will always rationalize their excuses, misconduct, and lies as legitimate explanations, business as usual, and cold truths. They’re wrong to do so.
All around us, Wisconsin and America offer a better standard that can and should be ours. A community need not accept that its politics will forever stammer. More than need not, should not: we deserve the full measure of the highest standards found in Wisconsin, in America, and among allied countries beyond.
There’ll be no settling for less, nor pretending that less is more.