My Graham Platner Apology

Platner addressing sexual assault allegations

The allegations published yesterday that Senate nominee Graham Platner sexually assaulted a woman are different from the previous scandals.

For one, they’re credible, based on Facebook messages from well before Platner entered politics. They’re also the first time Platner has been publicly accused of sexual assault. That crosses a line that tattoos, sexting and Reddit posts just do not.

Last month I said of the Platner campaign that “People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council” — I stand by what I said completely. Evidently Maine voters agreed, going on to vote for Platner by a huge margin. But that doesn’t mean they’re willing to look past sexual assault, which again, crosses a line.

That line is getting blurred by the legions of media commentators trying to make it sound like defending Platner against previous attacks is the same as defending him now.

To give you a sense of how nasty this is getting, here’s a fairly representative example from legal commentator Ken White, who said of me: “Anyway just waiting to hear what new hilarious insult [Ken Klippenstein] comes up with next to sneer at people who don’t like rape.”

Never having sneered “at people who don’t like rape,” I have no idea what he’s talking about. But I get the maneuver here. He and other commentators are trying to bully anyone who defended Platner against the earlier scandals into issuing self-abasing public apologies, by implying that anyone who doesn’t is pro-rape.

The campaign to get people to self-flagellate over things they never said is working, with virtually every high-profile figure who defended Platner in the past issuing weepy apologies about how sorry they are. Here are just a few examples:

All of these people took the present accusations against Platner seriously and promptly addressed them (and good on them for that). But it’s unclear to me what exactly they’re apologizing for other than not being clairvoyants able to foresee this week’s accusation before it happened.

As for me, my apology is as follows:

I stand by my previous defense of Platner. Offensive tattoos and sexting-out-of-wedlock struck me as the most Marine shit ever. I literally know Marines who’ve done both but later grew up and became decent guys. (Hi if you’re reading this!) I still believe in my bones that people like that deserve to have a shot at public office and that our country would be better for it. But the Marines I’m describing were never accused of more serious things like sexual assault.

People were right to give him a chance before; and they’re right to drop him now.

“But there were so many red flags,” the argument goes, pointing to the sexting, tattoo, and Reddit posts. Think about that argument for a moment: it means that people should be disqualified from public office for things there isn’t evidence they actually did, just “red flags” from which they can supposedly be divined. Ruling out anyone with Reddit post-level flaws bars millions of otherwise decent people from politics. The only people left are the exact kind of squeaky-clean, McKinsey consultant politicians that was the entire point of my Platner article in the first place.

As I wrote, people are done with the fake, plasticy candidates who’ve dominated politics in the past. I’m certain that’s still the case, regardless of how hard the media commentators try to gaslight you into thinking willingness to look past lesser flaws is the same as defending rape, misogyny, and so on.

Giving people a chance means that sometimes they won’t live up to it. No one should apologize for that.

I’m not.

— Edited by William M. Arkin