A former Health and Human Services employee approached Banks to complain that he’d been illegally fired from his job.
Banks had several graceful ways to deal with the situation.
He could have asked one of the staffers accompanying him to talk with the man and gather information from him. He could have said, “I’m sorry to hear that,” which would have committed him to nothing other than expressing sympathy for a fellow human being.
He even could have said nothing and just waited for the elevator doors to close.
Banks did none of those things.
Instead, he told the man that he “probably deserved” to lose his HHS job. When the man asked why Banks thought this, the senator from Indiana—a member of what once was considered the world’s greatest deliberative body—said it was because “you seem like a clown.”
Well, senator, with all due respect, you seem like a jerk.
None of these episodes reflects credit on these three men or the state they’re supposed to represent.
Indiana is and likely will remain a conservative state.
But most Hoosiers don’t equate being conservative with being rude, disrespectful or discourteous. They don’t take pleasure in making others feel small or feel bad about themselves.
Beckwith, Rokita and Banks clearly do.
Perhaps the incident that is the most painful of these three incidents is the one involving Banks.
The attorney general’s office in Indiana often has been occupied by cranks and creeps—Theodore Sendak and Curtis Hill come to mind—so Rokita’s ethical evasions aren’t the aberration they otherwise might be.
The lieutenant governor’s position always has been a kind of rest home for politicians, so seeing a non-entity such as Beckwith strive and strain to make himself and his office matter is like watching an ant try to lift an elephant.
But Banks holds the seat in the U.S. Senate the late Richard Lugar occupied with rare distinction for 36 years.
Dick Lugar was a Hoosier conservative to his core. He also was a man of impeccable courtesy. The thought of a U.S. senator using his position to treat a constituent—a fellow citizen—with disrespect would have horrified Lugar.
But Jim Banks is no Dick Lugar.
After his exchange with the HHS worker went viral, Banks doubled down, patting himself on the back for delivering a “hard truth.”
He seems to believe that holding an elected office entitles him to behave like a lout to the people he’s supposed to serve.
Sadly, Beckwith and Rokita—who, like Banks, are supposed to represent all Hoosiers, not just those who voted for them—agree with the so-called senator.
Where, oh where, do we Hoosiers find these people?
