I don’t want politicians to be “authentic.” I want them to be decent. I want them to be honest. I want them to be competent. And if they fail those tests, they don’t redeem themselves by opposing Donald Trump.
If you’re a conservative watching Democrats talk themselves into supporting Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat who until recently wore what sure looked like a Totenkopf tattoo (he covered it up after it became a political embarrassment) is to experience déjà vu. To a lesser but still familiar degree, I’m seeing Democrats engage in the same process of absurd accommodation and justification that Republicans use to excuse their deep love for Trump.
Let’s talk about that tattoo first, no matter how sick you are of hearing about it. For those who are not familiar with the Totenkopf, it’s the death’s head insignia of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, one of the three key branches of Hitler’s Waffen-SS, the armed backbone of the Nazi regime. And the SS-Totenkopfverbande arguably represented the worst of the SS. Among other duties, they were concentration camp guards, the people who were responsible for order in the industrial killing machines of Nazi Germany.
Platner has claimed that he didn’t know what the tattoo meant and that it was the result of a drunken mistake he made when he was in the Marines. If you believe this, (and obviously I don’t), he then, by his own account, carried a death’s head tattoo on his body for almost 20 years, apparently without the slightest curiosity as to what it was (though there are reports — which he disputes — that he called his tattoo “my Totenkopf” in 2012).
After news of the tattoo surfaced, Genevieve McDonald, who had recently resigned as Platner’s political director, questioned whether he truly didn’t know what the symbol signified. “He’s not an idiot,” she wrote. “He’s a military history buff.”
Platner also has a long history of internet trolling. He declared himself a communist. He’s said that all cops are bastards. He’s affirmed the belief that white people are “actually” racist and stupid. He repeatedly called people online “retarded.” Speaking about women who were concerned about sexual assault, he wrote: “Rape is a real thing. If you’re so worried about it to buy Kevlar underwear you’d think you might not get blacked out f——d up around people you aren’t comfortable with.”
He’s agreed with the idea that Black people don’t tip, adding his own two cents: “It always amazes me how solid this stereotype is.”
He once called war “the most enjoyable experience of my life” and even commented that a Marine who was punished for urinating on dead Taliban made “a poor choice, but only because of the current state of media affairs.”
Platner has acknowledged that these posts were wrong and deleted them. As I said, he’s covered up the tattoo as well. He blames his comments on a difficult period in his life that began after his repeated tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I certainly understand how a deployment (much less repeat deployments) can be traumatic, life-altering events.
Lots of Democrats are willing to forgive and overlook all of this. He held a polling lead in the Maine Democratic primary before his opponent, Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, dropped out, and Platner has secured the endorsement and approval of a number of leading Democrats, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
But that difficult period apparently wasn’t over in 2020, which is when he agreed that white people were racist and stupid, and it was still going strong in 2021, when he called himself a communist. He didn’t delete his posts or cover up his tattoo until after he decided to run for office.
That’s hardly the record of a penitent man.
Let’s be charitable for a moment. I believe in redemption and forgiveness. A person can absolutely go through an extended period of darkness and despair before finding his or her way out. I don’t think that we should define people by their worst moments.
At the same time, however, I don’t want to put people in the U.S. Senate who’ve recently struggled and who’ve recently sported an SS tattoo, and I definitely don’t want to do it because “the base” is angry and “the base” wants nothing more than a fighter to take on the hated political foe.
I know exactly where this process leads. For the last 10 years and counting, I’ve had a front-row seat at the festival of rationalization that’s turned the Republican Party into a Trump cult of personality.
The slide begins when you tell yourself that the stakes are just too high for normal politics. Of course I wouldn’t support this candidate in better times. But now? American democracy is at stake.
Millions of Republicans justified their votes for Trump in precisely those apocalyptic terms. To quote an influential essay by Michael Anton, a right-wing author and a former official in Trump’s State Department, “2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die.”
If history teaches us anything, it’s that difficult times call for politicians to demonstrate a higher degree of character. Character is never a luxury, but it becomes an urgent necessity in the face of conflict and adversity.
But still, you might think, if push comes to shove, isn’t it necessary to support the lesser evil? There are two problems with this argument, however, one that’s obvious and the other that’s more subtle and insidious.
First, the obvious problem — the lesser evil is still evil. You’re still compromising your standards. You’re still empowering someone you’d never ordinarily support. If a person with an identical profile applied to be your manager at work, would you be comfortable hiring him?
And if you’d have qualms putting such a man in charge of your team at work, why is it appropriate to put him in the United States Senate?
We should not minimize the gravity of the position by thinking of him as merely a vote against Trump. A central problem of our time is a diminished legislative branch, and we diminish it even more if we hold Senate candidates to lower standards than we’d apply to virtually any other workplace.
If you doubt the necessity of character in the legislative branch, remember the extent to which Trump’s effort to reverse a presidential election was aided and abetted by his legislative sycophants, and it is their failure to hold him accountable for Jan. 6 that immediately enabled his second term.
Low-character senators can ultimately be every bit as damaging as low-character presidents. In many ways, low-character presidents depend on low-character senators for their very existence.
Nor should you think of Platner (or Susan Collins, the incumbent he’s campaigning against), as “only a senator.” The moment a person is elected to the Senate is the moment he or she become one of the most powerful people in the country.
It’s also a sad irony that Democrats are tempted to compromise their standards in part to unseat one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict Trump. If Collins had her way in 2021, Trump would have been ineligible to run in 2024, barred from federal office forever.
The second problem is still more insidious. I’ve never met a person in my life who proudly calls their movement “the lesser evil.” No one starts a “lesser evil” chant at a political convention. You want to see yourself as a force for good, and as a result the temptation to overlook your allies’ sins or excuse their flaws becomes overpowering.
In fact, if we can redefine aggression as courage and instability as authenticity, then — voilà — vice becomes virtue.
The only thing it costs is your integrity. You twist yourself into knots finding ways to impose standards on your opponents while defending your allies for the same conduct. The exact wrong answer to a Republican Party that’s flirting with fascism is a man who chose to put vile Nazi imagery on his own body and kept it there for years.
But there’s something even worse that happens. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. When Trump first won in November, 2016, I watched friends and neighbors transform. They weren’t holding their noses any longer. They weren’t embarrassed by their vote.
He was the victor, the man who vanquished Hillary Clinton. If your compromise candidate wins — especially in an upset — he or she forms an immediate emotional bond with his or her victorious constituents. You’re relieved. You’re grateful. And you might even feel a tiny bit of personal gratification — see, I was right all along.
As a result, the aberration becomes the model. The “good people” like John McCain and Mitt Romney lost to the Democrats. But Trump won. We need more people like Trump. And if Platner beats Collins — especially after Collins has vanquished so many other, more respectable Maine Democrats — then the call will go out, “Where can we find more Platners?”
I know there are readers who will object strongly to this analysis. We’re not Republicans, you’ll argue. We’re not as vulnerable to demagogues. And maybe you’re right. Maybe you do have a stronger commitment to character and integrity than Republicans. After all, you didn’t nominate a man like Trump, right?
But how strong is that Democratic commitment? The Democrats (and the country) just endured an electoral catastrophe in part because a prideful president and a phalanx of his advisers concealed the true extent of his mental and physical decline.
Suffice to say, the list of recent Democratic political scandals is deeply depressing. One doesn’t have to excuse an ounce of Trump’s misconduct to say that the Democratic Party hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory during these dark political days. This is the wrong time to add a fresh compromise to a list that is already much too long.
Humility is a necessary aspect of character, and a key aspect of humility is to not think too highly of your own integrity and capacity to resist temptation. The humble person doesn’t look at their fallen or flawed friends and neighbors and say, “That could never be me.”
Instead, the truly humble person says, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post The Platner Trap appeared first on New York Times.
