Reflections on the "20-20 Rule"

The blackface uproar in Virginia may have died down, but who can doubt there are plenty more scandals where that came from.  Let's face it.  There is none righteous that sinneth not.  Every candidate will always turn out to have some sort of discreditable episode.  If being perfect one's entire life is made a requirement for office, then no one will qualify.*  That's why I think we should consider Kevin Drum's 20-20 rule.  Actions taken more than 20 years ago or before the age of 20 should be forgiven on three conditions:

• The offense must not be too serious.
• The candidate must have cleaned up his act and stopped offending since.
• The candidate must honestly own up to whatever it was.

That third condition is usually where candidates trip up.  Consider two recent examples.

Brett Kavanaugh was clearly a drunken, obnoxious frat boy during his high school and college years.  Two women made credible but uncorroborated accusations of sexually misconduct that could plausibly been seen by a drunken frat boy as a harmless prank and by the woman involved as a serious rape attempt. No one disputed that during his legal and judicial career, his behavior toward women was exemplary.  So, I would say that Kavanaugh met the first two conditions.  But he utterly failed on the third one by denying the obvious -- that he had been drunk and obnoxious at the time and pretending to be a near-saint.  So we were treated to the repugnant spectacle of Senators going through Kavanaugh's high school year book, looking for (and finding) evidence of any failing, no matter how minor.  An honest acknowledgement and apology cave have spared us the ghastly business.

So, too, with Ralph Northam.  Once year books become fair game, who knows what they will turn up.  In Northam's case, it was a photograph of him and another student posing, one in blackface, and one in Klan robes.  It was in terrible taste, but not any sort of crime.  And the caption was innocuous.  ("There are more old drunks than old doctors in this world, so I think I'll have another beer."  So why not just show a barroom scene?).  So it meets the first condition.  Northam has had a perfectly good record on race since, while Virginia Republicans are increasingly going neo-Confederate.  So the second condition is also met.  But Northam, too, is completely failing on the third condition, making comments so incoherent and ill-thought-out that it would be a favor to handcuff him, stuff something in his mouth, and lock him in the closet till this blows over.  

And with the Democratic primaries for governor heating up, there will be plenty more examples.  Elizabeth Warren is an obvious case.  She claims to have some Cherokee ancestry and listed her ethnic group as "American Indian" in a few cases where it has been advantageous for her to do so.  Although there is no direct evidence that she ever received affirmative action benefits for her heritage, no doubt there was some social cachet in it.  So I would give her a pass on her first condition -- the offense was not too serious.  Furthermore, Warren has not made her claim to Cherokee ancestry a defining quality in her political career, focusing mostly on race-neutral issues such as bank regulation.  So she meets the second condition as well.  But she has proven a similar disaster on the third condition -- not honestly facing up to why she made such claims and what the advantage might be.

All of which raises a few other points.  First of all, if the offense in question is extremely common, we are going to have to give more of a pass on it than if it is not.  This is not the same as saying that it was perfectly acceptable in those days, or that people didn't know better back them.  But if an offense is so common that making it disqualifying would seriously shrink the pool of candidates, we really should take off severity points (while still requiring the candidate to mend his or her ways, and to honestly own up to it).  Drunken frat boy behavior was rampant among elite colleges and students when Kavanaugh was in school, and making it disqualifying would seriously reduce the available pool of federal judges.  While one would expect anyone in the 1980's to know that black face and Klan robes are not funny, judging from the number of revelations coming out, blackface appears to have been extremely common at Virginia Military Institute (VMI, Virginia's most elite college).  Making it disqualifying would (apparently) strip Virginia of much of its leadership.  And every white person in Oklahoma claims a Cherokee princess somewhere in their family tree.  Forcing candidates in Oklahoma to forego this confection would turn the state over to carpetbaggers.

And that raises another point as well.  As the office becomes higher, the applicant pool becomes wider, and perhaps what is pardonable in a lower office becomes more serious in a higher office.  Federal judge-ships may have an inordinate number of  graduates from elite schools with a frat boy culture; Virginia politics may have an inordinate number of VMI graduates who wore blackface; and Oklahoma residents, politician or not, may see a Cherokee princess ancestor as part of the Oklahoma identity.  But Presidential elections can be more particular.  (Although it does seem a bit unfair to exclude Virginia or Oklahoma politicians from running for President).  A fine example here is Joe Biden.  Biden was forced to withdraw from the 1988 presidential primary when he was found to have plagiarized speeches.  Plagiarizing speeches was apparently seen as disqualifying from being President.  But it did not prevent him from serving another 20 years as a Senator from Delaware, or for eventually becoming Vice President.  It is unlikely to be an issue if Biden chooses to run this time because the scandal came out a long time ago and is seen as old news.

Finally, I would add that even quite a severe offense might be forgivable, but it will require a much greater display of contrition than a minor offense.  In 1963, George Wallace, governor of Alabama, employed a Klansman as his speech writer and personally stood in the schoolhouse doorway to keep black students out.  In 1982, he was elected to a fourth term on the strength of black voters.  This was very serious bad conduct, and anyone can suspect his contrition was more political opportunism than sincere.  But nonetheless, black voters forgave him.  While I would hate to offer George Wallace as a positive role model for anything, still, politicians might consider his example in the virtues of owning up to past vices.

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*Spare me any jokes about maybe this being a good thing.