Remember when President George H.W. Bush endorsed a Democrat for governor of Louisiana? That bipartisan act took place in 1991, when former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards ran a comeback race that pitted him against former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. Bush was only one of many Republicans and Democrats who endorsed Edwards, and they did so despite Edwards having a long history of alleged corruption (a popular bumper sticker of the time read “Vote For the Crook. It’s Important.”).
Edwin Edwards won that 1991 gubernatorial election, was later convicted of racketeering, and served eight years in prison. A genuine crook. And yet it was the morally correct thing to do to support him in 1991.
Today, we see the wreckage of candidates’ races in Maine and here in California, both due to sex scandals, and it is the morally correct thing to do to be glad they dropped out.
In April, a jaw-dropping report in Politico portrayed Bay Area congressman Eric Swalwell as a former man-on-the-rise who thought the rules didn’t apply to him. “Not only was he willing to take risks to get to where he wanted to go, he was convinced — or at least, seemed to be — that he’d escape the consequences.” That quote refers to him allegedly telling his staff to ignore speed limits and other traffic rules to get him where he wanted when he wanted, but it’s horribly ironic in light of the allegations of sexual assault that drove him from Congress. Dozens of Swalwell’s former staff members issued a joint release saying the allegations were “serious, credible and demand accountability.” They called for Swalwell to drop out of the gubernatorial race and resign from Congress, both of which he did, insisting all the while that he was innocent.
Another Democratic proclaiming innocence who just dropped out of a race is Graham Platner, the party’s nominee to take on long-serving Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins, who is thought to be vulnerable this election cycle. He had rabid support from the progressives, who stuck by him even after initial reports of Platner having a tattoo he claimed he didn’t know was a Nazi symbol and who had troubling allegations of toxic behavior toward women. It was in the wake of those allegations that the “believe her” crowd rallied around . . . Platner. One post I saw ricocheting across social media back in early June attempted to paint the allegations as the result of collaboration between “Dem and Rep operatives” — which, if true, would be another rare and refreshing example of bipartisanship in these super-polarized times — and concludes “This is the most obvious Zionist smear campaign in history.” Yikes.
As The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last wrote, the pro-Platner progressives have lashed out at “corporate Dems,” supporters of Israel, and the rich. Last adds, “I have a question: Why aren’t these people angry at Graham Platner?”
Indeed? Why do people with histories of horrible behavior — criminal or just legal-but-terrible — put themselves forward for highly public positions of power? Likely it’s a belief that either their actions will never become known, or that if they do become known, they’ll be able to elude justice. Donald Trump is just the highest-profile example of it, but he’s not the first.
Why do people with histories of horrible behavior put themselves forward for highly public positions of power?
It’s clear why Edwin Edwards ran: He was shameless. Even though the law finally caught up to him early in the new century, even after release from prison, he again ran for Congress. (He lost, unable to line up a Nazi or KKK leader as an opponent.)
The sleaze is bipartisan, as the now-unemployed former Republican officeholders Chuck Edwards and Tony Gonzalez can attest.
Corruption and sleaze don’t necessarily end careers. We see that in the real and fictional worlds. For the latter, look at Frank Underwood in House of Cards, where the sleazy southern politician works his way up from the House of Representatives to the White House. After sexual assault allegations against Underwood portrayer Kevin Spacey became public, the character was quickly written out of the series. That took care of the fictional political scandal, but Spacey the actor apparently believes it’s time we all forget the cases against him and forgive him.
Go ahead and uncancel him if you’d like, but for me, I’d rather seek posthumous absolution for someone whose scandal was born right here in San Francisco.
In 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and William Randolph Hearst established the playbook for celebrity sex scandals. Arbuckle, Hollywood’s highest-paid silent film star, was charged with the rape and manslaughter of Virginia Rappe, an actor who died at a party Arbuckle threw at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel.
Long before social media infected our social discourse, Arbuckle was roasted in the pages of the tabloid press, despite the weak case against him. The woman who accused him of causing Rappe’s death had a criminal record of fraud and extortion and was apparently so unreliable that the prosecution didn’t even use her in the trials. Yes, plural—there were three trials, with hung juries in the first two and an acquittal in the third; that third jury even issued an apology to Arbuckle. But his career was seriously damaged, and he was forced into bankruptcy by the loss of income and the cost of the trial.
Fatty Arbuckle never really recovered from his scandal, despite not being guilty. Despite his exoneration, his name was still tainted in the public eye.
Maybe things will turn out better for our political scandal poster boys. Perhaps one day Platner will reinvent himself. Swalwell, less likely, but who knows? Donald Trump is still fighting his court-ordered payment to E. Jean Carroll. If one wants to wish all concerned justice and peace, that seems like a fine and dandy position to take. But if you want to support the accused by making wild accusations against the accusers (and, I guess, against “Zionists”), then you’re saying more about yourself than you are even about the poster boy.
