Honesty is the best policy: Scandalized politicians are doing it wrong

We’ve all made our share of dumb mistakes, and as we watch the latest political scandals unfold, we’re relieved that we’re not public figures and can leave our own mortifying missteps in the past.

Politicians ARE public figures, however, and it’s a sure bet that their political enemies will stop at nothing to dig up evidence of their past misdeeds. The more salacious, the better, and if there’s a photo or video, pay dirt!

If you decide to run for a high-profile office, you may as well accept that everything in your past will be brought to light in a manner that is the least favorable to you. Knowing this, you’d think political candidates would do a better job of managing their scandals.

They’re doing a lousy job, however, so I hope to suggest a better way using three notable examples.

My strategy is this: Tell the truth. When we’re honest about our shortcomings, nobody can use them against us.

Note: This works only for past mistakes that are not still ongoing, and it doesn’t and shouldn’t absolve someone of blame for serious crimes such as sexual assault, murder, and war crimes.

We’re all hypocrites

When we’re judging the actions of someone we support, we tend to consider the underlying motives of the actor, and we do so sympathetically. On the other hand, if we’re judging the actions of someone we’re against, we tend to look only at the act itself, although we’re happy to ascribe bad motives to that act.

For example, most Trump supporters were once Bill Clinton’s detractors. These “values voters” were out for blood when Clinton’s (admittedly awful) sexual sins were exposed, but when confronted with Trump’s, these same people tell us they voted for “a president, not a pastor.” And those who are offended now at Trump’s (admittedly awful) sexual sins were silent during the Clinton scandals.

We are a deeply moral people—when it comes to judging people we don’t like. When it’s OUR guy, however, we promptly abandon our morals and adopt a libertine stance that would make Baudelaire blush.

We remain loyal even when the politician’s actions are REALLY bad. For this reason, I suggest that the best way to deal with scandals is to come clean—really clean, apologize, and move on.

In other words, if people strongly dislike you, you’ll never win them over no matter what you say or do. If they love you, they’ll forgive almost anything, and they’ll bring the undecided voters with them. To accomplish this feat, you’ve first got to give your supporters a chance to forgive you. The only way to do this is to acknowledge your mistakes fully and ask for forgiveness. Then, it’s up to the voters to decide.

Bill Clinton didn’t inhale

Bill Clinton turned 18 in 1964 and attended college during the ‘60s and ‘70s, where he protested the Vietnam War.

Given this timeline, it seems impossibly quaint now that Clinton ignited (sorry) a minor scandal when he revealed that he smoked marijuana when he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford when he was in his early 20s.

Clinton famously said: “I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale it, and never tried it again.”

This dopey (again, sorry) statement was a rare misstep for the politically savvy Clinton, who often used surgically crafted phrases to defuse other scandals large and small.

Clinton was elected president anyway, so the gaffe didn’t do irreparable damage to his political career. Still, it distracted from his campaign, and it has followed him since.

A better way: Why not just say, “Well, I’m a child of the 60s, so yes, I tried marijuana. I think many of us did, right? It wasn’t for me, and I didn’t really try it again. Now, that I’m a parent… blah blah blah.”

It’s counterintuitive, but when you admit to something without holding back, it makes you relatable and diminishes the appearance of wrongdoing.

Elizabeth Warren is not Cherokee

This shouldn’t be much of a story at all, but Warren’s ham-fisted defenses have turned it into a scandal that threatens to derail her political career.

Pretty much everybody I know (including me) was told that we were “part Indian” and specifically part Cherokee. Many of us repeated these dumb family stories until we discovered as adults that they were false. (In my case, I researched my genealogy thoroughly, and my DNA test results supported my findings.)

Over the years, Warren publicly stated that she was proud of her heritage and was listed as a minority professor in Harvard Law School’s faculty directory. She even claimed to be an “American Indian” on her 1986 Texas bar card.

It appears that Warren genuinely believed that she was part Cherokee, so she wasn’t technically lying. Further, there is no evidence that she was given preference in hiring or school admissions as a result of her claim, nor did she use it to advance her career.

Still, it’s an embarrassing mistake. But the real gaffe is how she handled it.

When her claim of Cherokee heritage was challenged, she could have said, “Oh, gosh, my family always told me that I was part Cherokee. I believed this to be true, but to be honest, I’ve never seen any documentary evidence of this. I’ve never used it to advance my career, but of course I’ll stop claiming it unless I get better evidence. I’m really embarrassed to have made this mistake, and I’m sorry I misrepresented my heritage.”

Had she said this, Sen. Warren would have destroyed her opposition’s plan to characterize her as a phony and an opportunist.

Instead, she added fuel to the fire by standing by her story.

As Warren continued to defend her claim, the press reported the story widely, and then Donald Trump noticed. He offered to donate $1 million to Warren’s charity of choice if she could prove Native American ancestry.

Now, if you can be outsmarted by Donald Trump, you probably deserve what you get, and Warren took the bait. She promptly took a DNA test, which showed that she has a Native American ancestor (six or more generations back) but is mostly of European descent. She’s got more Native American ancestry than most Americans of European descent, but it’s not as if she’s got a Cherokee great-grandmother.

This stunt made her look silly, and Warren’s insistence on responding to her critics while standing by her story have ensured that it’s now a central part of her presidential campaign and will overshadow any of her substantive policy proposals.

Gov. Northam and blackface

Newly elected Virginia governor Ralph Northam is the latest politician to find himself embroiled in a blackface scandal.

Northam’s page in his 1984 yearbook from Eastern Virginia Medical School features a photo of two men, one in black face and one dressed as a Ku Klux Klansman. This was an occasionally-seen tasteless “odd couple” costume of the day. (The actress Kirstie Alley’s parents were killed in an auto accident while on their way to a Halloween party dressed in such a costume.)

It is unclear which one of the men is Northam or how the photo was selected for his page. (Northam has alternately said that one of the men is him and that perhaps neither man is him. He says he does not know who selected the photo, although it seems clear that students selected their own photos for their yearbook pages.)

No matter, blackface is and always has been racist, and there is no excuse for this. We understand that 1984 was 35 years ago, and yet we’re surprised that such an offensive photo would be published in a yearbook even at that time. What were they thinking?

Once the photo came out, Northam could have made this statement: “My God, what was I thinking? I don’t remember dressing in that costume or choosing that photo for my yearbook, but what if one of those men is me? That costume is inexcusable, and I should have known better. I am so sorry. In the 35 years since this photo was taken, I have… (and here, he could list the various ways that he has worked for racial and social justice).”

This would not have solved the problem, because it’s such an offensive photo, but it would be a much more helpful strategy than what Northam chose.

Instead, he gave conflicting explanations for the photo, which makes it seem as if he’s trying to deceive us. Further, he gave an embarrassing freewheeling press conference (never a good idea in these situations) in which he made several unhelpful statements and appeared to be on the verge of doing the moonwalk. Now, word is, he has hired a private detective to investigate whether he’s in the photo and has had several strategy meetings with his supporters, details of which were promptly leaked to the press. The resulting stories were not flattering.

As with Warren, Northam’s poor handling of the scandal has given the scandal legs. The more he tries to deny and deflect, the worse it will be.

I submit that all three of these crises could have been prevented by telling the truth and allowing us to recognize our shared vulnerability as human beings.