Nobody’s Perfect

By Kevin D. Williamson

Thursday, June 04, 2026

 

I get it—I do: I also have some tattoos I regret.

 

Nobody is perfect.

 

We all make mistakes. As a Christian, I believe that there is nothing—nothing—that is unforgivable. And at the more mundane level, I believe in second chances as someone who has needed a lot of those over the years. I myself am not very good at forgiving and forgetting, but that is a shortcoming in my character that says nothing about the virtues of forgiving and forgetting.

 

That stipulated, Graham Platner should not be in the Senate. It would be bad for the country and bad for him.

 

There are not many productive uses for negative polarization, but it sometimes is helpful to turn a question around. And so there is a question I sometimes ask my evangelical Christian friends who are committed Donald Trump supporters: “How many pornographic films would a man have to have appeared in before he lost your support as a political leader? Is there some number? Because three obviously ain’t it.” Donald Trump, in case you missed that detail among the many other colorful bits of his résumé, has appeared in cameo roles (as himself, of course) in at least three softcore porn films produced by Playboy Enterprises. Many of the same people professing to be Christians who scoff at James Talarico—because they object to his diet and his insistence, obviously true if expressed with modish imbecility, that the metaphysical essence of the Almighty transcends that which can be communicated in the gendered pronouns of the English language—somehow make their peace with Trump’s depicting himself as Jesus, with his plainly heretical religious views, and with his desultory, undistinguished career as a performer in pornographic films. It is almost as though these professing Christians do not believe the things they profess to believe. It is almost as though they cannot serve two masters.

 

How many porn films would be too many? One might as well ask these gentle Christians how many lies, how many adulterous affairs, how many probably illegal hush-money payments to porn stars diddled while the humiliated rent-a-wife was at home tending to the new baby ...

 

Well, they almost always say, Trump’s not perfect, but ….

 

And that is how you know they are stupid and dishonest.

 

Trump has made political life worse in obvious ways. But political life has made Trump worse, too, bringing out the worst in his already contemptible character, amplifying his vices, vanity, and venality to such a point that they have become strategically consequential geopolitical variables. It is as if Providence wanted us to have the most straightforward possible example of a man who gains the world but loses his soul. That’s the God of the Old Testament saying, as (cover thine ears, Mr. Talarico) He often does, whatever is Hebrew for, “Hey, stupid.”

 

Progressives rallying around the troubled candidacy of Graham Platner, the habitually dishonest skirt-chasing Totenkopf enthusiast challenging that nice Maine lady for a Senate seat, have learned precisely the wrong lessons from Republicans’ experience with Donald Trump, an experience that has left the GOP morally debased and ethically discredited and—perhaps Republicans will actually care about this part—unable to get much of what it wants politically. Legitimate issues, such as immigration control and abortion regulation, have been tainted by association with Trump and Trumpism, which means dishonesty and stupidity in the formulation of policy followed by incompetence and corruption in the execution of policy.

 

Progressives will get the same thing from such a figure as Platner. This is, evidently, a man who is a drama generator with a short attention span. And Democrats are telling themselves the same stupid lies Republicans offer when they want to feel better about their political situation. Again, look across the aisle and what you will see is a mirror.

 

Republicans looking for a reason to support Trump naturally found one, and, being Republicans—and therefore suffering a certain intellectual disability when it comes to imagination—they settled on the most decrepit, most obvious, most banal one: Our opponents are so wretched and so dangerous, and the emergency of this moment is so critical, that we must not only accept and ignore but explain away or positively embrace the thoroughly rotten character of the man we are putting forward as a candidate for high office.

 

But what about the character stuff? The Republican answer, in short: Hocus-pocus!

 

If I had a dollar for every useless goblin, prominent or obscure, who wrote or said the exact words “Trump isn’t perfect,” I would have ... many more dollars than I do right now. It is as though this were some kind of magical incantation, some handy formula of moral alchemy. Presto change-o!

 

And, now, inevitably, comes: “Graham Platner isn’t perfect, but ...”

 

To say that Platner “isn’t perfect” is to say nothing at all. None of us is perfect. To say that a man is not perfect is akin to saying he is not a giraffe or a Tiffany lampshade. Platner is a man with an SS tattoo and fidelity problems who cannot manage to give a forthright account of either these or many other legitimate concerns about his character and his candidacy. It is not that Graham Platner is not perfect—it is that he is positively bad, not in a merely private sense as some apologists would have it but in the sense of being a bad sort of person to endow with significant political power. Private morality and civic virtue are not the same thing (Cato the Younger was a drunk) but there is a great deal of overlap in that Venn diagram.

 

The standard for public men is not perfection. To write and speak and argue as though it were is simply a cheap and cowardly rhetorical dodge, one that should always and everywhere be treated with the contempt it deserves.

 

Should we love a man such as Platner—pray for him, forgive him, help him along, welcome him, encourage him? Yes, of course, all that. Should we endow him with a position of extraordinary public trust? Of course not. We should forgo that not only for our own sake—as a matter of prudence and political hygiene—but also for his sake. Putting a man with Platner’s weaknesses into such a position before he has reached a more mature and well-integrated state of life is like asking a newly reformed drunk to work as a bartender. A man with troubles of that sort should go where he will not be tempted.

 

If Graham Platner had an R next to his name, progressives would get it. If Donald Trump still had a D next to his name, conservatives would get it.

 

But, sure. Nobody is perfect.