3 December—El Liberalissimo emailed me late yesterday that when he commented that I [Mordecai] “assume nearly everyone who runs for office . . . is a crook and not to be trusted,” he [El] “was merely [suggesting] that stereotyping is bad practice, even of politicians.”

And stereotyping is indeed a bad practice—even or especially when politicians do it. But I’m not stereotyping pols when I’m critical of them in general. Rather, my comments are empirically based on over six decades of observation of and not infrequent intimate involvement in municipal, state, and national politics.

Since small-town politics is an entirely different animal from—and not normally as financially lucrative as—the bigger municipal, state, and national variety, however, not that many crooks are attracted to it. While trust is a sine qua non of all politics, it, along with personal relationship and personality are what it’s all about in small towns.

Back when I was in high school and not nearly old enough to vote (you had to be 21 back then; too bad the age has been lowered), a family friend who was a very powerful New York politician—and three sheets to the wind at the time—let it all out. These are close to his very words:

“Don’t trust any of us, we’ll do anything to get elected and more to stay elected. We need the power; the more we get, the more we need. It’s an addiction. We’re in it for ourselves. Power drives us more than anything else.”

In vino veritas, the vino in that case being my father’s Johnnie Walker Black Label. I’ll never forget that moment of truth. Nor will I reveal who confessed. Seal of the confessional. Suffice to say, he did quite well in all respects and was never indicted . . .