News this week has been full of scandals, mostly in the Virginia line of succession for Governor.  The two week timeline has had an exhausting pace.

On Jan 30 (Groundhog day) Governor Ralph Northam (D-Virginia) severely botched an interview where he was asked about Virginia’s new law that loosened restrictions on abortion.  Democrats generally celebrated the bill as a victory for women’s reproductive rights, but Gov Northam took a dump in their punch bowl by describing a hypothetical situation in which a deformed newborn could be left to die after birth.

“There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

In a rare moment of bipartisan unity, all politicians’ jaws dropped simultaneously.  The Governor of Virginia just described -not abortion- but infanticide.

Republicans have long opposed abortion and they’re objections are presupposed.  But supervised death of infants after birth?  After birth it’s no longer about the woman’s body, it’s unambiguously about an infant life.  Even the Democrats can’t defend this, at least not publically, yet every current and future presidential candidate would be asked to weigh in on the topic.  Governor Northam was now a liability to the party.  Something had to be done.  Quick.

Completely by coincidence, just hours after the disastrous interview a ‘racist photo’ from the Governor’s medical school yearbook surfaced (oh year, I forgot to mention he’s a pediatric neurologist).

Let’s be clear – this photo is from a medical school yearbook.

In 1984.

That’s 35 years ago.

And nobody found it until the Governor became a national embarrassment to the Democratic Party.

The news broke first from a conservative news outlet who was contacted by an ‘anonymous tipster’ and within a day the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus and multiple Democratic presidential candidates called on Northam to resign.  But if this damning torpedo was in the Republicans’ arsenal, wouldn’t they have fired it during the campaign?  Why wait until now?  In fact, why should Republicans try to oust a guy taking a wrecking ball to his own party!  As the Napoleon maxim goes, “Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake”. (Note to Republicans: keep this in mind when AOC gives her press conferences about the New Green Deal and eliminating cow farts).

But Democratic fratricide makes perfect sense.  Follow me through the strategy steps:  Express outrage at the racism, eliminate the toxic agent, replace him with the Lt Governor (D) of Virginia – Justin Fairfax – a young, personable fresh face who happens to be black.  So not only is he immune from racism, but every future public appearance signals how virtuous and diverse the Democratic Party is.  They were turning lemons into champagne! Governor Northam is toast, disaster minimized!

Well, for a few hours.  Vanessa Tyson, a professor at Scripps College in California came forward and accused Fairfax of sexual assault in 2004 (that’s 15 years ago).  She gave a detailed and salacious account of the encounter and even reported the story to the Washington Post in 2017 when Fairfax was running for office.  The paper decided not to publish her claims for lack of corroboration.   We’d be interested to know the Post’s journalistic standards that declared Justice Kavanagh’s accuser credible but not Ms Tyson.  But let’s be fair:  All of us need to be consistent here:  During the Kavanagh confirmation I felt strongly that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, and a person shouldn’t have his/her career and life destroyed solely on allegations in the distant past.

I believe this in Fairfax’s case as well.

But the spotlight here is on presidential candidates like Cory Booker, who gave an Oscar-worthy, on camera speech about the bravery of women who step forward and should be believed at face value on such allegations.   Your similar thoughts now on Lt Gov Fairfax, Candidate Booker?

I honestly don’t think the Fairfax scandal was politically motivated.  He didn’t actually deny the encounter, he just claimed it was consensual.  (Should have checked with your PR firm to wordsmith that response first, Justin).   It’s hard to make this one disappear.  Republicans will make sure it doesn’t.

So Democrats have to consider the 3^rd in line, Attorney General Mark Herring (D).  The Democratic silver lining was that at least they can keep it in the party.  But alas, Herring too was hung on the party’s own gallows.   Almost immediately after we knew his name headlines reported that Herring had donned blackface to emulate a rapper in a 1980 college party. An added sting being that just 2 days earlier Herring publically declared it is no longer possible” for Gov. Ralph Northam to remain in office because of his racist past.   Ouch.

Democrat leadership has to be thinking “Geez the racism stain was supposed to work FOR us!” 

The political bloodbath continues in Virginia, the outcome being uncertain.  But there is substantial regret about the weapons brought onto the battlefield.

Lots of proverbs appear as low hanging fruit here – Glass houses, reaping what you sow, careful what you wish for, shooting yourself in the foot, goose and gander… fill in your favorite one liner here.

But I hope we use this opportunity to think deeper into our responses to such situations.  Here are a couple thoughts:

• Develop consistent values, not convenient ones.  If you are going to express outrage at racism, sexism, socialism, wealth, environmental destruction, reproductive rights, etc then bite the bullet when it hurts people and organizations you care about.  Hypocrisy destroys credibility.  We’ve learned in recent days that lots of celebrities have appeared in blackface – Tom Hanks, Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmel, Joy Behar..  Saturday Night Live regularly features ‘Black Jeopardy’, which is a funny parody of black culture.  Surely SNL don’t own an exclusive right to satire.  I may not agree politically with some of the people in this saga, but I don’t see racism in any of these claims.  Keep your policy debates inside the rails.  This selective feigned outrage is what all of us hate about politicians.

• There has to be some statute of limitations on inappropriate behavior. This doesn’t mean we discredit claims of misconduct, but what should due process look like? And does poor judgement 15 years ago disqualify a person from public service for life?   What would an appropriate sentence be – execution?  Life in prison? 20 years hard labor?  Depriving a person of their livelihood for the rest of their life?  Don’t just preen on your moral high horse, give some thoughtful consideration to a response you can justify.   And how far back can we go in someone’s history to assassinate their character?  Does questionable humor, an ambiguous romantic encounter or a few underage beers as a teen discredit a person for life?  I challenge any of us to say with a straight face we have never done or said anything inappropriate, never laughed at the wrong joke, never made a juvenile mistake in high school.   And where does it stop?  Junior High?  Grade school?  If a classmate of Cory Booker comes forward and claims she suffered permeant psychological damage because he said she had ‘cooties’ back in the second grade should he drop out of the presidential race because he is a lifetime sexist?   Absurd.

This is what happens when we weaponize social values rather than live them.   Each of us will inevitably fail to live up to our own standards at some point. Perfection is not a requirement for advocating values and being a virtuous person.  Demanding it from others is disingenuous.

So let’s call for it to stop.

Congressional approval rating might soar all the way into the high teens if our representatives focused as much on making American’s lives better as they do calculating their next political ‘gotcha’.