I want to confess -- and I mean that sincerely -- that I have difficulty assessing what disclosures warrant someone resigning from elective office.
It seems clear to me that Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh were guilty of things that are clearly disqualifying. I didn't think Bill Clinton needed resign 20 years ago, as some called for him to do. I still don't think it was right for Al Franken to have to give up his Senate seat.And when the news about the Northam yearbook picture first surfaced, I wasn't clear about how disqualifying that should be.
I thought about how Virginians might have known, when they elected him, that a guy with his background -- a white Virginian born in 1959, in the region in which he was raised, who went to college where he went, and who voted twice for George W. Bush for President -- would likely have had a mindset 35 YEARS AGO in which he might have been blind to the destructive and injurious meanings of a white man wearing blackface.
He has governed pretty much as we would have expected on Election Day, 2017. He has not been visibly guided by any of that the racist consciousness he showed decades ago is guiding his way of governing. Does it matter if he's perhaps no longer racist in the ways he was?
So it wasn't immediately clear to me that he should resign.
And part of me thinks it possible that historians of the future might judge that the response from Democrats to this unhappy discovery was excessive in some ways. But human, which includes the working of passions. (Isn't that what happened to Franken?)
The response clearly comes not just from sober judgment. The response is indicative of a whole set of forces at work in the culture,
including our having to witness ugly racism from the current President (and feeling impelled to define ourselves against that), including the ongoing battle in other realms as well -- MeToo -- to end once and for all the casual acceptance of dominant groups oppressing subordinate groups.But whatever the objective, fair judgment might be -- and, in my own confusion, I mostly defer to those who instantly felt moral clarity that Northam must go -- it is now crystal clear that Northam must step down.
He must because all the people whom Northam should be serving are saying he must. Here's why that is sufficient reason.
We want moral authority in our leaders. It is painful that we have a moral monster serving now as President. It is (and feels) important that the governor of Virginia have it -- especially now when the Democrats are called upon to define themselves as the side that is moral, in contrast to the Trump Party which will stoop however low it needs to in its quest for power.
Virginia's Governor cannot do his job well if he lacks moral authority, especially at a time when, for vital strategic reasons, must boost -- in the public mind -- the important value of moral authority.
Moral authority is not an objective property of the person. It is something that is conferred by those who recognize that authority. It is they who give him that authority.
The statement from Senators Warren and Kaine testify unmistakably that Northam has lost moral authority. Their judgment is spoken on behalf of Virginians and particularly for the Democratic force in Virginia that has so much important work to do for this state and for this nation, against a Republican Party that nominated Corey Stewart for U.S. Senate, a man whose racism is deeper and uglier and more current than the Northam photo ever was.
The words from all over the Democratic world are declaring the same thing, which must be true because they are saying it: Northam no longer has the moral authority we should require in our governor. And thus he must resign.