Reliving our past for what?
The usual scenario: some reporter going back and digging up the candidate’s bad-boy or bad-girl past, and the candidate playing it down.
A recent turnabout scenario: a presidential candidate reminding the public of his bad-boy past to retain voters’ respect.
Accused by fellow presidential candidate Donald Trump of being “super low-energy,” Dr. Ben Carson, recently recognized as the Republican front-runner candidate in Iowa, assured everybody he hadn’t always been the calm, cool and collected cat we see now.
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Carson assured everybody that when he was a teenager, he “[went] after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers,” and he reminded everyone that he tried to stab somebody when he was 14. “Fortunately … my life has been changed. And I’m a very different person now,” he said. But the implication hung in the air: “Hey, don’t take my kindness [or mild manner] for weakness.”
I’m not sure why Carson — who’d discussed his past in his book, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story — didn’t respond more along the lines of “Hey, I jog 10 miles/bench-press 250/do a thousand crunches and planks a day,” or “Hey, I’m like that old Army commercial. I get more done by 9 a.m. than most people do all day.” Or, “Low-energy? Why don’t you try successfully separating conjoined twins, pal!”
The incident brings me to ponder the conflicted relationship we have with our, and each other’s, checkered pasts.
It would seem that confession is good for the soul … and the reputation. When we confess a sordid past, we get shrugs, whereas if somebody digs in our pasts and finds dirt, we get shock and outrage. I’m reminded of David Paterson, the former New York governor who took over from Eliot Spitzer, in 2008. Spitzer went down in flames in a scandal involving prostitutes. Right after being sworn in, Paterson basically decided, “Hey, I’ll reveal every unpretty thing I’ve ever done,” and confessed to having previously cheated multiple times on his wife, as well as to having tried cocaine and marijuana. Reactions ranged from “Well, hey, that was in his past” and “I like his honesty” to (at least in my case) “OK, OK, shut up already!”
There have been instances where people have actively covered up their less noble pasts, pretending for all the world like butter never melted in their mouths. When that past is exposed, that person is subject to being seen as a monster, no matter how much he may have
“made up” for that past. And if the past is an illegal one, depending on the statute of limitations, he may yet have to pay. (Even if you’re Mother Teresa now, we’re not gonna like it if you were a mass murderer 10 years ago.)
There are the more successful among us who have been honest about their checkered pasts not just to beat the muckrakers to the punch, as Paterson did, but to help others who think they could never change or rise above their current desperate circumstances, as I believe Carson did. And yep, there are those who brag about their pasts to obtain “street cred” — or, hey, dates — among those who are of the opinion that having totally acted out makes you a boss.
Then we get into the philosophical side of it all. There are those who would tell us not to dwell on our pasts because yesterday is gone and what matters the most is
today and tomorrow. There are those who tell us that we should remember our pasts because we were shaped by them and we must learn from them (otherwise we’re destined to repeat them).
We’ve all been heroes and goats at one time or another, and as many a sage has concluded, our pasts may shape us but not define us. I would add that the way we react to other’s pasts should not confine them … shame them … put them on a pedestal … or confer street cred.
Barring any illegal or heinous crimes once committed, what should always matter most is the fruit that person’s life is bearing now. Even past crimes should take a backseat if that person has paid his debt to society and has been living well ever since.
We’re all glad Carson put aside his “volatile” teenage past. But it’d be better to dwell on the energy he has used in a good way than consider his onetime bad-boyness as proof he’s not a slug.