A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

18 November 2015

Finding skeletons in politicians’ closets is getting easier

As the sad demise of John Walsh unfolded last summer, I wondered whether 30 years ago he would have been exposed as a plagiarist. Probably not, I concluded. Without the internet and software such as Turn It In, exposing his plagiarism would have required a tremendous amount of work. But today, many books, reports, periodicals, and public records, have been digitized, making it much easier to dig up dirt on one’s political opponents.

That may have been what happened to Denise Juneau, who this week admitted that as a wild young college student she was cited twice for drunken driving, spending seven days in jail after her second arrest. She wasn’t proud of those arrests, and somehow managed to conceal them during her 2008 and 2012 campaigns for Montana’s Office of Public Instruction.

Whether Republican opposition researchers were tipped to her arrests, or found them by pounding shoe leather and tapping keys on a computer, doesn’t much matter. A search was conducted and the truth was uncovered. As Mike Brown observes at The Western Word today, it’s remarkable that it took GOP oppo researchers so long to uncover her transgressions.

Candidates of both parties should take notice. Secrets are increasingly difficult to keep in our age of diminishing privacy and ever more powerful search tools. My advice: don’t wait for your unpleasant secrets to be exposed by others. Hold a press conference to introduce your skeletons to the voters. They might not like the smell and click of your exhumed bones, but most will give you credit for fessing-up to your sins. And fessing-up is the first step to redemption and forgiveness.