If there’s any drop of lemonade we’ve managed to make from the bushels of lemons dumped on us by COVID-19, it may be that we’ve all had plenty of time to play Wordle, to weed out bushels of useless stuff we’ve accumulated and to take stock of our individual lots in life.

On that last score, we’ve all likely gotten a self-confidence boost by observing our elected representatives more closely than usual.  My reasoning goes like this – we watch even amateur athletes with jaw-dropping awe at their abilities to run, throw, hit or shoot, and we marvel at the imagination, creativity and genius of artists, musicians, actors and writers. We’re humbled by their achievements. 

Yet, how often have we said to ourselves, after listening to the statements or decisions made by our public officials, that what they just said or did was the dumbest, pettiest, most-untruthful and meanest-spirited thing we’ve ever heard or seen, and felt we could wake up out of a sound sleep, stand behind a microphone in our pajamas and make a more-truthful, honest and intelligent statement than they just did after putting on their power ties and supposedly giving the same issue their utmost consideration?

Look, none of us is going to be remembered much beyond the lives of our grandchildren. You can count on one hand the number of people who will. Maybe Presidents George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, or  the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but not even most of our presidents. I heard a story on NPR recently about how few people remember who Bing Crosby was, yet just 50 years ago he was one of the most-popular and well-known performers in the world and his music was all over the radio. So, what are the chances that any of today’s politicians are going to crack the A list?  I’d say Powerball offers better odds.

And if that’s the case, then why don’t more of our representatives look in the mirror at something beside their hairdos and take some personal pride in what they’re doing? There’s a concept in athletics of playing within yourself. It has more to do with how you’re playing the game than with whether you’re winning or losing. 

Sure, we all like to win, but at what cost? A win that makes you out to be a pompous, lying fool at someone else’s expense isn’t really a win. It’s the kind of thing that leaves you lying for eternity 6 feet under a block of granite that says, “Good hair, but no friend of the truth.”

You may have guessed that my destination was the performance of some of the Senators who asked inane questions — “What’s your definition of a woman?” — and made grandstanding speeches to promote themselves by trying to undermine the qualifications of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. 

They should be half as well-qualified to do their jobs as she is to take on her new position. Yet instead of asking serious questions that had a chance of producing helpful responses, all these Senators did was shine a bright light on themselves that revealed their own sad limitations. They couldn’t come up with claims of, for example, sexual harassment, that several of Jackson’s future colleagues had to bob and weave around in prior hearings, so they said “soft on criminals and child pornographers” enough times that they hoped some of that stinky mud might stick to the wall.  

All in all, I’m not worried about whether Jackson will be confirmed.  She will be, because her intelligence and demeanor came shining through all the background noise. But if the gauntlet she has had to run is indicative of who we’re being represented by, then I say we should all be filing for those Senate jobs, because nearly all of us could do better in our pajamas.

L. Phillips Runyon III practices law in Peterborough and was the presiding justice of the 8th Circuit Court.