By Jim Geraghty
Thursday, July 16, 2026
Last April, a profile of Maine’s Democratic Senate
candidate Graham Platner in the political news outlet NOTUS observed that,
“far from dooming his campaign,” the controversies swirling around him “seem to
have simply played into Platner’s brand as a regular person — someone outside
the usual political system.” The reporter, who went to high school with the
candidate, said that a few months earlier he’d spoken with Platner supporter
Jacob Makoujy, who was 27 at the time. “He told me he appreciated the way the
candidate had not dodged questions about the revelations but took
accountability. ‘It feels like I can see my own growth, myself, in him,’
Makoujy said.” Like Platner, he’d looked back on things and thought, “‘Wow,
that was kind of stupid of me.’”
Honesty about past mistakes is an admirable trait, but
Platner practiced nothing of the sort. The self-described military history
buff’s claim of inadvertently getting a tattoo of the Totenkopf, a Nazi SS
symbol — and somehow not noticing for 18 years what it was — never made much
sense. Platner’s former political director Genevieve McDonald and his
ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield both said that Platner had told them he knew
exactly what it was.
Every time some new revelation about Platner’s past
emerged during the course of his campaign — previously cancellation-worthy
comments on Reddit, sexting with women on the teen-heavy social media platform
Kik, allegations of physical abuse — a town hall attendee or media interviewer
would ask Platner whether he had anything else in his past he wanted to
disclose. Each time, Platner insisted no, there were no other hidden
bombshells. By the time another ex-girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, came forward in
July and accused Platner of rape, even the most patient Democrats abandoned
ship.
Throughout his campaign, Platner and his fans argued that
every revelation of past bad behavior was a sign of his authenticity.
His top strategist, Daniel Moraff, argued in a June
interview with the Wall Street Journal: “Part of our thesis here is that
people do not want their candidates grown in vats. They want people who are
real human beings, and they want people who do not look and sound like the
vat-grown people who’ve been leading this country off a cliff.”
Fact check: No candidate for office in the U.S. at any
level, no matter how polished and seemingly perfect, was grown in a vat. Not
even Mitt Romney.
Platner and his campaign tried to pull off the jujitsu
move of arguing that the more the public heard about his bad behavior, the more
he somehow deserved credit for vaguely acknowledging it (usually after it had
been uncovered by reporters).
“It’s very clear that here in the State of Maine, the
voters really do understand that I am who I claim to be,” Platner told NPR on
May 30. “I’m a very real person, warts and all.”
The first problem with this argument is that Platner is a
particularly inauthentic candidate. His whole campaign was built on his
working-class image, but he attended an elite boarding school in Connecticut.
His harbormaster position was, in his own words, a “very, very part-time job.”
(The town actually left the position vacant from February 2022 to April 2023.)
He said he “made a living on the sea” as an oysterman, but the only customer of
his oyster business was his mother’s restaurant. Platner told the New
Republic he hadn’t paid himself a salary from the business for five years;
almost no one noticed. He bought his house with a $200,000 loan from his
father, not with “support from the VA” as he had claimed. On the campaign
trail, Platner kept insisting that Maine Senator Susan Collins had sent him to
Iraq, but she had voted to authorize military force in 2002 and he enlisted in
2004, volunteering for three tours over eight years.
The second problem is this notion that authenticity is a
virtue, and perhaps even the supreme virtue, in the context of an election to
high office. Is authenticity really that worthy of celebration if what you’re
being authentic about is your own bad behavior and bad decisions? What’s the
difference between being authentic and being shameless?
Even if being authentic about your past bad decisions is
a virtue . . . should it outrank other virtues, such as having the good sense
to not make those bad decisions in the first place? Being honest about your
flaws may make you a better person, but does it make you a better choice than
your competitors for the position of U.S. senator?
Implied in all this is that inauthenticity is some sort
of cardinal sin, but there are times when we’re obligated to be less than our
truest selves. A functioning society requires us to not express every thought
we have at every moment. “Boss, I think that’s an idea with real potential.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure no one will notice that pimple on your nose.” “No,
honey, those jeans don’t make you look fat.”
There’s a terrible bit of advice floating around our
modern society, urging people to “just be themselves” on a first date. No! Try
to be the best, or at least a better, version of yourself; you’re much more
likely to get a second date being that version of you. Corporate America’s
campaign to encourage employees to “bring your whole self to work” has been a
terrible failure. Bring your professional and hardworking self to work and
leave the rest at home.
Discussing the geyser of scandals around Platner, New
York University professor Scott Galloway insisted during a podcast appearance
in early June that “the obsession with personal purity has become a luxury
belief.” (Galloway works at the American Institute for Boys and Men, which aims
“to inform policy and public dialogue with non-partisan research so that boys
and men from all backgrounds can lead healthy, happy, and meaningful lives.”)
Did objections to Platner’s Superfund site of a life
really amount to an “obsession with personal purity”? Platner’s fans kept
insisting he was a changed man, although the evidence for that assertion was
sketchy; as of early June, his profile on Kik remained active.
No doubt, some of these arguments are side effects of
living in the Trump era. Democrats believe — with some good supporting evidence
— that Donald Trump has gotten away with everything, from his comments on the Access
Hollywood tape to January 6 to accepting a jet from the Qatari government.
Ergo, no scandal is disqualifying. But deep down, people know two wrongs don’t
make a right, and blubbering “but Trump!” in the face of a credible rape
accusation is a confession of a dead conscience.
La Rochefoucauld’s maxim “Hypocrisy is a tribute that
vice pays to virtue” expresses the idea that even when people do the wrong
thing, they don’t want others to know that they did the wrong thing; they want
to be seen as good people and are embarrassed to admit their sins.
Platner and his fans, like Galloway and Moraff, are
attempting nothing less than a full-scale moral inversion. A candidate who
faces no accusations of sexual assault or mistreatment of others, who studied
hard, worked hard, and avoided scandal — well, that guy is untrustworthy,
“vat-grown,” or unacceptable because he doesn’t have any shameful actions to
admit.
They expect you to admire a guy like Platner because, you
see, he may be a dirtbag, but he’s an authentic dirtbag.
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