Virginia is for politics lovers, if you like a good disaster. The latest: Attorney General Mark Herringsays HE once donned blackface — 39 years ago, as a 19-year-old college student, to join pals in impersonating a musical group they admired.
This after Gov. Ralph Northam’s yearbook page and then Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s subsequent linkage to an allegation of sexual assault. Herring is next in line in order of succession in Virginia.
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This is mostly for Virginians to decide, though everyone has opinions. Mine is that chortling Republicans don’t have a lot of room to suddenly become enforcers of standards of behavior, particularly on acts 39 years old given the “fine” people in Charlottesville, the senators who’ve been wrapped in Confederate regalia, and so on.
Still hanging, too, is the question of statute of limitations. It reminds me of a conversation Gov. Bill Clinton had with me in the summer of 1986, when he was first considering a run for president. Is there ever a time, he wondered, that youthful indiscretions are forgiven and forgotten and no longer relevant in political discussions. Silly me. I thought at the time he might have been referring to experimentation with marijuana.