Are We To Desert Him?

(Two weeks ago I attended a rally for Graham Platner in Portland, where both he and Bernie Sanders spoke. My personal conviction is that he will represent the best interests of the state of Maine and the country at large.)

What? cried Mr Dedalus. Were we to desert him at the bidding of the English people?

—He was no longer worthy to lead, said Dante. He was a public sinner.

—We are all sinners and black sinners, said Mr Casey coldly.

—Woe be to the man by whom the scandal cometh! said Mrs Riordan. It would be better for him that a millstone were tied about his neck and that he were cast into the depths of the sea rather than that he should scandalise one of these, my least little ones. That is the language of the Holy Ghost.

—And very bad language if you ask me, said Mr Dedalus coolly.

In this famous Christmas dinner scene from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,* several characters quarrel over the fate of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish nationalist leader whose political career collapsed after revelations of his long-standing affair with the married Katharine O’Shea. Dante Riordan insists that Parnell can no longer lead because he is “a public sinner.” Mr. Dedalus and Mr. Casey, by contrast, cannot understand why Ireland would destroy its most effective political leader over a personal indiscretion. The argument escalates until Dante declares, “God and religion before everything!” Mr. Casey responds with one of the most shocking lines in Irish literature: “Very well then, if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!”

Today, their argument cannot help but invoke the current anxiety within the Democratic party over the candidacy of Maine oysterman Graham Platner for United States Senate. In his piece in The Atlantic today, David Frum echoes the fictional Dante, calling for Democrats to “[c]ut Platner loose.” His analogy: Roy Moore, who years ago solicited sex with minors, and whose senate candidacy was killed by his own Republican party. His target: Platner, who sent sexually suggestive messages to women who were not his wife, and whose candidacy for Senate is still (as of today) supported by his own Democratic party. Frum’s virtue argument is familiar: a candidate accused of serious personal misconduct must be abandoned, even at political cost. To do otherwise would compromise the integrity of the party itself. But the equivalence Frum draws between Moore and Platner is seriously flawed, and politically dangerous.

In late nineteenth-century Ireland, Charles Parnell’s fall from grace was a national trauma. Under his leadership, the cause of Irish Home Rule had transformed Irish politics and altered the relationship between Ireland and Britain. Many Irish nationalists regarded him as indispensable. Yet after the revelation of his long affair, political leaders concluded that he should no longer lead. The Catholic Church joined the campaign for his removal, and the nationalist movement fractured. What had begun as a question of personal morality became a matter of national destiny.

Joyce recreates the dispute with extraordinary restraint. Dante Riordan insists that Parnell’s conduct has rendered him unworthy of leadership. Mr. Dedalus and Mr. Casey are horrified by the willingness of Ireland to destroy its most effective political leader. The power of the scene lies in the fact that Joyce refuses to tell us who is right. Dante fears the future consequences of abandoning principle. Casey believes that future generations will suffer if condemnation destroys the very political project upon which an inherently moral future depends. In other words, both sides claim the mantle of foresight. The disagreement concerns which danger is greater: a quick ruling against Parnell’s moral character, or forsaking the moral vision of a national democratic future.

The question currently facing the Democratic party and Maine voters is not whether character matters; of course it does. Instead, we must ask whether every moral failing carries the same political significance. A movement that cannot distinguish between different forms of misconduct eventually loses the ability to make meaningful political judgments at all. There is a profound difference between acts that reveal how a person will exercise public power and those that reveals ordinary human weakness. There is a difference between corruption and infidelity, between predation and immaturity, between abuse of office and personal failure. To collapse these distinctions is to flatten moral judgment; such oversimplification reflects a lack of political seriousness.

The core problem with Frum’s essay is that it presents the question of Platner’s moral fitness in a vacuum. The Democratic Party is not being called upon to assess his virtue in ordinary times. Instead, it is now three days before a primary that may influence control of the United States Senate, which would in turn affect the very survival of the American experiment. The stakes here are not symbolic. Judicial appointments, voting rights, reproductive freedom, labor protections, environmental policy, and the future direction of the federal government all depend on November’s electoral outcomes. And Platner’s political stance on these issues is clear.

The anti-Parnell faction, more than a century ago, believed they were defending morality. In practice, they helped destroy the most effective political vehicle Ireland possessed. They won an argument over virtue and lost the war over power. History has not been kind to that choice. The uncomfortable truth is that democratic politics often requires difficult judgments. Voters are rarely presented with saints. They are asked instead to assess imperfect human beings and the consequences of empowering or rejecting them. That is why the relevant question is not whether Graham Platner has flaws; every candidate has them. The relevant question is whether those flaws outweigh the public consequences of sabotaging his candidacy.

Joyce’s Irish nationalists around the dinner table understood that sometimes, the refusal to tolerate imperfection is not a sign of political virtue; sometimes it is simply a different form of self-inflicted defeat. “If it comes to that,” cried Mr. Casey, “no God for Ireland!” The line shocks because it inverts the hierarchy of values, placing politics before morality, and victory before virtue. Yet the real significance of that exclamation in the context of the Platner debate is far narrower: When a political movement faces an existential choice, it cannot pretend that private virtue and public consequences are the same thing. Sometimes they point in different directions. And when they do, a political movement must decide which future it is willing to sacrifice.

Forty-five years after Joyce delivered both sides of a political debate around a dinner table, Dominic Behan wrote “Come Out, Ye Black and Tans.” By then, both the Easter Rising and Irish independence belonged to national memory. The uncertainty that animates Joyce’s scene had largely disappeared, and Behan’s verdict is unequivocal:

Come let me hear you tell
How you slandered great Parnell,
When you thought him well
and truly persecuted,
Where are the sneers and jeers
That you bravely let us hear

When our heroes of ‘16 were executed?**

These lyrics were written after the uncertainty had vanished. While Joyce gave us history before the verdict, Behan gives us memory after the verdict. Joyce stages the argument; Behan announces the winner.

Let’s not risk a similar gap of decades before we decide on the moral imperative facing the Democratic party today. A mature politics evaluates whole lives, not isolated failings. It assesses future impact dispassionately. In this moment of profound national consequence, Graham Platner’s public commitments and potential for reclaiming the virtue of democracy vastly outweigh the imperfections that his critics now place at the center of the story.

The Irish chose to remove Parnell; history would later suggest that they had overestimated his moral failings and underestimated his political importance. Democrats should think carefully before making the same mistake.

*Quotations are from: Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Edited with an introduction and notes by Seamus Deane. London: Penguin Books, 2000.

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Out,_Ye_Black_and_Tans