Opinion: On Skeletons, Closets, And Running For Office In The Digital Age

By David Larson
Carolina Journal

A well-known verse from the Gospel of Luke reads: “For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.”

The verse warns those who have successfully hidden faults in this life, that God sees, and ultimately, all will come to the light.

In the digital age though, those hiding faults, especially major public figures, are unlikely to get a reprieve until Judgement Day. Increasingly, those who want to run for office, or otherwise seek power and prestige, should assume that every last skeleton will be freed from every closet.

At one point, a politician could just respond with, “Well, that’s hearsay,” or, “That’s not how I remember the conversation.” But if that conversation happened in a chatroom or the comments were posted on one of the many social media platforms, people are now likely to find it and draw their own conclusions.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once told the Wall Street Journal that everybody active online now should consider changing their name in the future because it will be impossible to avoid embarrassment over their digital history.

“I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,” Schmidt said.

And multiple candidates in recent election cycles, including more than one in North Carolina, have had to face this new reality. The latest, of course, is Republican gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who denies the CNN report alleging past controversial comments made on pornographic sites.

Some grassroots stars have been able to defeat “establishment candidates,” those who had much more political baggage to defend, but may not have fully realized they’d have their own histories to defend. In Madison Cawthorn’s case, years’-old posts and videos, needles hidden in a massive digital haystack, were combed through, eventually leading to his political downfall.

Of course everyone has said and done embarrassing things, and many of those things can be easily dug up. But not everyone has skeletons that send their closest allies running when they’re revealed. Those who know for a fact that they have secrets of this magnitude may begin to self-select out of the process in the age of the internet. Others may just hope it never comes up or assume they can ride out any controversy.

Looked at one way, the new dynamic is frightening, almost dystopian. In a world where every dumb thought or bad impulse is recorded, to be later exposed, only the perfect and the shameless can survive. Considering there are very few in the former category, that may leave us with many leaders from the latter. Or, in a world of that much transparency, we’ll just need to become a more forgiving culture (however unlikely that is). Because tearing everyone down for missteps that are fairly universal will just be mutually assured character destruction.

But in another way, the new dynamic could be a positive thing. I’ve never bought into the idea that we can separate a leader’s “personal life” from how they’d act as a leader. Character is character. Those who lie and cheat when it comes to business partners and spouses are likely to lie and cheat when it comes to the public purse or campaign promises.

So it’s just not convincing when people brush off major character faults and repeated moral failures by saying things like, “So what? I’m not electing him as my pastor.” Sure, but if you wouldn’t trust somebody around your wallet or your spouse, probably best not to hand them the reigns of power.

In this way, having the digital history of our potential (and current) leaders easily accessible is actually a major benefit. If someone’s character is extremely compromised, more than the usual, that will likely become evident.

The increasing use of past online activity will also lead major donors to dig much more (and earlier) into those they’re considering backing. If there are signs and rumors of significant digital baggage, having those skeletons loosed early will ensure donors and voters can react to it in primaries, rather than having it used against them as a last-minute general-election weapon.

There is certainly a lot for everyone to consider in this brave new digital world, where things people assumed were hidden come into the light.

David Larson is opinion editor of Carolina Journal.