I have a confession. When I was 14 years old, I was a card carrying member of the John Birch Society. And campaigned for Goldwater.
Although now I am 180 degrees from the right.
Will my past keep me from politics? The culture changes and people change. It was 55 years ago. Am I doomed because of this transgression?
Or when do we realize that a person’s ancient past doesn’t reflect who we are today?
Surely not as bad as a blackface, but it is up there.
Well, you’ve admitted it, so that sets you apart. You can publicly repudiate your old views if you’d like to go a little further in your quest for public office. You can go even further still and make amends, if you’d like. It’s only complicated if someone wants it to be.
You’re referring to Gov. Northam, and it seems to me that his problem was that he tried to escape – or, rather, hide from – his past, rather than deal with it. Then he got caught.
(Well, his real problem was how he dealt with it once he was caught, which struck pretty much everybody as evasive and disingenuous – or, at best, really really dumb and tone-deaf. None of this is what you want in a politician.)
So I wouldn’t hold your JBS membership against you. Go ahead and run! Just keep in mind that nobody has the right to hold political office. You, the politician, might not get the fair shake you feel you deserve because of something outside of your control. But dealing with unforeseen circumstances is part of the job.
EDIT: It was pretty well publicized before the 2016 election that Clinton had campaigned for Goldwater, too. It probably hurt her a smidge, at least. If that story had blown up like Northam’s, I would, as a voter, want to see how she dealt with it.
As I understand it, when you consider running for a high political office, the first thing the campaign advisors do is to ask you about all the embarrassing stuff that’s going to come out sooner or later. That way, it can be dealt with in advance. Or if it’s really bad, they can tell you up front that you’re unelectable. I think Governor Northam’s problem, in part, is that he didn’t do this.
So if your background includes a teenage flirtation with the John Birch Society, you can schedule an interview with a friendly member of the press to show how immature you were and how much you’ve grown since.
I pretty much assume that any attempt at public office would dig up things I don’t even remember doing.
The simple fact that at 48 I have 4 dead ex s/O’s would probably result in congressional hearings.
*None while we were together
Sister Mary Alice made me stand out in the hallway in the first grade because I didn’t follow directions on a worksheet. But she was older than dirt back then (1961) so she’s probably long dead. Maybe I’m safe…
It strikes me that someone in the OP’s shoes would be best served by proactively incorporating the offense into the election campaign. “I used to be a Bircher. Was totally convinced it was The One True Way. But as I gathered life experience I began to understand the problems with the organization and it’s philosophy. Eventually I not only walked away from them, I took up an opposing view. I’m don’t think that way anymore, but I can understand why some people might.” Turn it into a chapter in acquired empathy or something. Or just hope nobody ever finds out.
This. I actually have quite a bit of respect for Derek Black, even though what he did was pretty reprehensible.
I don’t know about him running for office, though I don’t think there is any good reason why he couldn’t.
Obviously, were he involved in any sort of violence, then it would be a much longer road towards redemption.
OTOH, if he just showed up on the political scene, and we found out much later about his past, I would not feel nearly as forgiving.
If you hide your past, it will be held against you, when and if it is uncovered. If you acknowledge your past,… well, it may still be held against you, but you at least have a chance to get out in front of it and show how you are not that person anymore.
I’m guessing that being on the rolls of the JBS and campaigning for Goldwater would cause much less reaction than, say, pictures or quotations showing you doing or thinking things that are currently upsetting. Just the bare bones facts are kind of dry, and can be more easily addressed. So, are there pictures?
The phrase I’ve heard is “control the narrative”, which I think means that if you are proactive about admitting past misdeeds, you can manage how the story unfolds and how to spin it.
Justput it in the bookall politicians are supposed to write before running for president.
Well this has been known forever, or at least since 1946 when Robert Penn Warren wrote All the King’s Men. Pertinent part: Gov. Willie Stark hires newsman Jack Burden to dig up dirt on people, so that Stark can ruin them if they don’t do what he wants. He sends Burden after a judge who’s a Burden family friend (and more). Burden says hedoesn’t think he can find something on the judge; Stark says, “There is always something.”
Note that Stark didn’t want to ruin political careers. He wanted to blackmail people into certain votes, or actions, or inactions. Still. “There is always something.”
Thank you everyone.
I remember attending JBS meetings. They discussed how certain parts of Dragnet (the series) were communistic. Which I find humorous now.
I am thinking about running as President of my pueblito. Pretty certain no one has heard of the JBS here.
I did send a letter of resignation to JBS Headquarters. With signed, return receipt.
Since I came out on SDMB, the only record is here. And no one reads SD. Just kidding.
So, what it boils down to is the person who gets elected was the most successful at avoiding discovery of something embarrassing from their past, or at least was able to avoid it longer than their competition.
I’m afraid that ableist slur is going to ruin your 2060 Congressional campaign.
This appears to be a not-so-stealthy attempt to defend the governor who dressed in blackface at a medical school in the 1980s and was so proud of it he published it in the yearbook. These are not equivalent.
You were part of an anti-communist organization during the time when being anti-communist was common. You repudiated it at the same time everyone else did. Huge swaths of people can see themselves in you. We know what it’s like to be caught up in the zeitgeist of the day. I remember calling people “gay” and “retarded” back in the 1990s. But everyone remembers doing that at the time, so all I’d have to say is “Yeah, I used to think that was okay, but now I don’t.”
But this guy dressed in blackface in the 1980s, 30-50 years since that had been remotely acceptable by anyone in the United States. These were grad student age people, not youngsters. The guy’s nickname as “Coonman.” It is rare that any American finds any of this relatable, as something that a decent person could have done.
He had not repudiated this and move on before. And now he is refusing to try and make penance by dropping out and going and doing stuff to make amends for his transgression that he had not yet done. He’s trying to pretend that it is no big deal. He is showing he puts himself above the party since having the blackface governor is a problem for the Dems. Putting yourself above the party is (in this case, at least) putting yourself above the country.
Before a proper apology and attempt to make amends could have saved him. But he didn’t do it. And now he’s trying to undo admitting that the pic was of him, and then relating a story of other blackface as if this would help. (No, it is arguably not as bad, but it’s not a defense at this point.)
We understand forgiveness just fine. Forgiveness is not automatic. It is granted when the person has shown it to be appropriate. This governor has not, but shown it to be inappropriate. Deciding whether or not we thought the blackface was disqualifying is something that should have happened during the election.
As you say, the people you would supposedly run for would probably not care about the JWS, because it’s not relevant to their issues, and because it’s a common thing that most people have repudiated. The point is, the people always get the chance to choose, and you don’t get to shame them for deciding that someone hasn’t sufficiently made amends or repudiated their past.
I think its a reaction to Trump and the GOP. Trump and the GOP aren’t affected by their past, or present, in the slightest. Trump and Steve King could walk around in KKK robes and it wouldn’t affect the level of GOP support they have in the slightest.
So the democrats are becoming over-sensitive to show they are different.
Basically, if you’re a democrat you’d better hope you never did anything insensitive 40 years ago. If you’re a republican you can violently rape children while wearing a klan hood and the average republican voter won’t care.
I wrote in another thread that when I was 14 or 15 I was an Arab for Halloween, complete with brown makeup and a slapdash attempt at a keffiyeh. Of course I’m horrified by it now. In my other post I describe how I wish there had been an adult in my life to smack me upside the head when I suggested the costume. I’m sure there are pictures of it. My mom probably has several. There may be a picture in my yearbook. I didn’t keep them, so I don’t know. Not that I ever had any intention of running for office, anyway, but I’ve been thinking about that a lot the past few days. I’d like to think that the rest of my life has shown that I’ve gained a lot of understanding in the past 30+ years. But I guess if I ever did decide to run for office I’d try to be the one to put the story out so I’d have some control over it.
Come to think of it, maybe we’ve been doing political campaign rollouts backwards. Instead of candidates introducing themselves with uninterrupted self aggrandizement, they should start confessing right at the outset. “Hi, I’m John Smith, and I’m running for Governor. There are some things you should know about me right away…” Didn’t Obama kind of do this in his book, where he admitted to smoking pot and sometimes doing heroin when he was in college?
Please. Americans just elected a treasonous pussy-grabbing racist narcissist to be President. If Trump can get elected, anyone can.