I wonder how politicians do it. How do they keep a straight face when they say some of the things they say?

Case in point: Senator Pete Ricketts.

Recently, at a gathering in Fort Calhoun, the Senator criticized his opponent Dan Osborn for allegedly recruiting Graham Platner to run for Senate in Maine. Platner, as you’ll recall, was, among other things, accused of raping a former girlfriend.

When asked how he could condemn Platner while defending our pussy grabbing, porn-star-loving, Epstein-confidante president, Ricketts told the World Herald that the allegations against Trump had been publicly litigated while Platner was trying to hide his actions.

So, because Trump was publicly litigated and convicted in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, that makes him better than Platner? As far as Platner trying to hide it, I don’t recall our senator fighting to get to the bottom of the Epstein files, do you?

How does Senator Ricketts say those things with such a straight face?

Now Dan Osborn denies the claim made by one of his former staff members about recruiting Platner. But Platner does seem to be the kind of blue-collar candidate Osborn would try to get in a race.

The allegation that Dan Osborn was connected to Platner wasn’t the only criticism Ricketts had for his opponent. Without a trace of recognizing the irony, this son of a billionaire went on to criticize Osborn donors for being rich coastal elites.

But it’s not just Senator Ricketts; I wonder how other politicians can support a candidate as flawed as Platner with a straight face as well.

To say the Democrats did a poor job vetting Platner would be an understatement. But what they found by just scratching the surface should have been enough to disqualify him. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why the Nazi-linked tattoo, the sexual texts he sent to women that weren’t his wife, or a Reddit post where he said that a Purple Heart recipient didn’t deserve to live weren’t enough to disqualify him. Surely there had to be other good-looking oyster farmers with a military background and a lot less baggage that could have run.

I don’t expect every political candidate to be perfect. We’re all human, and everyone has done or said things in their past that they regret. Everyone has the ability to rehabilitate themselves and change.

But lately it seems that it’s a race to the bottom regardless of political party.

What does that say about us? We get to decide who gets the job. Character deficiencies don’t seem to be the deal breakers they used to be. The big money and blind party loyalty can manipulate the voters to ignore qualities in our leaders that we wouldn’t accept from a friend.

Four years ago, Nebraskans elected a governor who didn’t feel the need to debate his opponents or give us specific proposals on what he would do if he was given the job. It was enough for Jim Pillen to have an R after his name and a grandkid on his knee.

But now we know more about the quality of this man. A man who gave a lobbyist friend of his a 2.5 million no-bid contract. A man whose family is blocking federal investigators from looking into the death of a teenage worker on one of his farms. We now know that he wants to negate the will of 70% of Nebraska voters and cut the social services of people who need the help.

In a recent Nebraska Examiner interview, the governor said he won’t debate his opponent this time around either. Personally, I’d like to hear what Governor Pillen has to say about those issues or explain why he uses a personal phone for government business.

But I might be in the minority. I fear voters will put him back in office because they are more concerned with what bathroom someone uses than the governor’s ethics and lack of transparency.

To be fair, there are plenty of elected officials on both sides of the aisle who are good and decent people. And nobody expects them to be perfect.

But we need those good and decent politicians to be more vocal about bad candidates even when they’re on their side. Because when I hear them defending their party while attacking the flaws of the other party, I have to wonder how they can do it with such a straight face.

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.