Honesty Is Currency. America Has Been Running a Deficit for Years.

Honesty Is Currency. America Has Been Running a Deficit for Years.

I’ll say this about Spencer Pratt: when the Palisades burned, he didn’t reach for a media consultant. He pulled out his phone, pointed it at the smoke, and showed the world his family’s life reduced to ash. No talking points. No tearful presser. Just a man in shock, broadcasting raw grief to anyone who cared to watch. Meanwhile, Mayor Karen Bass was posing for photos at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana — 7,500 miles away — at the precise moment evacuation orders went out for the Palisades. She later called the trip “absolutely” a mistake. The voters filed that away.

The takeaway from this week’s Los Angeles mayoral primary isn’t complicated. Pratt — a reality TV star with zero governing experience — is holding second place in a 14-candidate field with ballots still being counted, currently leading City Councilmember Nithya Raman toward a November runoff against Bass. He got there because Los Angeles recognized something real and had been starved of it long enough that a former Hills cast member looked like the adult in the room. That ought to embarrass a few people in Washington. It doesn’t, but it ought to.

Credibility is a currency. It stores value, compounds when well-managed, and collapses when debased. The American political class has been running a debasement program for decades, and Gallup now measures........

© Townhall