Then vs. now

I am not the kind of person who routinely longs for the good old days.  I like to think of myself as a fairly progressive person, and that I know how to adapt to changing times and circumstances.

But some recent events have made me think about how things used to be, compared to how they are now.

For example, political candidates were frequently judged to be finished in the eyes of the public when some thing either happened or a past event was found out.  Remember Gary Hart, the handsome Senator from Colorado who had worked for John F. Kennedy and was often compared to him?  Reporters covering his presidential campaign in 1988 apparently heard a lot of rumors about Hart and his many infidelities and when confronted about these rumors by the media, Hart challenged them to follow him and find out.

They did.

He was photographed secretly aboard a boat aptly named “Monkey Business” with a pretty young woman named Donna Rice sitting on his lap and at a townhouse in Washington, DC.  He suspended his campaign a week later.

Roughly the same thing happened to John Edwards, the tort lawyer who became a Senator and was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and ran for President in 2008 but was exposed for having had an extramarital affair and for fathering a child outside of his marriage while his own wife was waging a difficult battle with breast cancer.  He dropped out of the race and attempted to save his marriage but took nearly two years to admit to fathering the child.  Later in 2010, Edwards’ wife lost her life to breast cancer.

And then there’s Donald Trump. I could detail all of his moral failings here, but they’re all well documented, so I won’t. But think with me what it says when someone who is the defendant in FOUR unrelated criminal matters is running for president, is by far the front runner for his party’s nomination, and that six of eight of his OPPONENTS commit to supporting him even if he is convicted of one or more of the crimes of which he is accused?

As I said at the outset, that was then, and this is now.