Ralph Northam deserves his current friendless state. The Virginia governor’s initial reaction to a shocking image of a man in black face standing next to…
Ralph Northam deserves his current friendless state.
The Virginia governor’s initial reaction to a shocking image of a man in black face standing next to someone dressed in a Klan outfit that appeared on his page of his medical school yearbook was to admit one of the figures was him.
His news conference the next day taking his confession back was, even if you believe his latest strange account (he supposedly knew nothing about his page or the yearbook), maladroit and cringe-inducing. It included the revelation that he used shoe polish to darken his face as part of a Michael Jackson costume he wore in a dance contest.
In 2017, when Northam won the governorship, he slimed as a racist his Republican opponent Ed Gillespie, a well-respected Republican whose alleged sin was running ads against MS-13.
Finally, in another controversy last week, Northam endorsed infanticide and refused to walk it back.
It’s hard to recall a politician who has so quickly and starkly been exposed as a cipher who ascended to a major office almost by accident (any Democrat would have won in Virginia in 2017).
So there won’t be a lot of tears for Ralph Northam, but the controversy consuming him is disturbing nonetheless for what it portends about the drift of our political culture.
