Past Protection in Politics?

October 3, 2007 12:55 PM

I've often considered running for public office in the United States when I get older - I am currently a male in my 20s. However, I belong to a few dating sites and have, on occasion, engaged in sexually explicit chat with more than a few random people online, and met some in real life for "casual encounters". Nothing too weird or kinky, always consensual, nobody underage (except when I was underage as well). What are the odds that this history of mine will be uncovered, and is there anything I can do to protect myself?
posted by anonymous to human relations (23 comments total)

If it's on the internet once, it's on there forever. The best you can do is notify your campaign manager so that you can prepare for the mudslinging or do a preemptive explanation.

On the other hand, since online sexcapades are becoming ubiquitous, it may be lost in the tide as long as you don't choose a hypocritical position as a key stance.
posted by JeremiahBritt at 1:02 PM on October 3, 2007

Basically, this depends on whether anyone will care enough to find out.

...which is something we can't know.

You should assume that it is possible for your enemies to find out if they care to. Thus, you should make it your business to ensure they don't care to find out. Avoid hypocrisy on this matter like the plague, because that gets people riled up like few other things do.
posted by aramaic at 1:10 PM on October 3, 2007

So, as I was saying, accurately but apparently a bit too briefly: If there's text on the internet of the chats with your name attached to it, then no, there's not a lot you can do to protect yourself from this being found out. But you can plan to make sure it doesn't have much effect. You've seen plenty enough examples in US politics of how a suitably contrite "Yes, I had some indiscretions, but thy're in my past and X and Y have forgiven me, so why can't you?" statement can render the accusations toothless. You just need to make sure you're ready to deliver that.
posted by Wolfdog at 1:22 PM on October 3, 2007

DAVE???

No, the odds are just about at 100 percent that this will be uncovered. You can either be totally straightforward about it or cozy up to the media in hopes that they won't talk about it.
posted by Greg Nog at 1:22 PM on October 3, 2007

Following up on what Stynxno said:

Seriously, you introduce the subject (in general terms) before anybody has a chance to say "gotcha." For example, you are interviewed on the subject of internet censorship and you say, "You know, before I met Mrs. Anonymous, I occasionally participated in some adult online chat sessions, as I'm sure many people in my generation have done." And then you go on to make your point about how this youthful experimentation reinforces your point of view on freedom of speech or censorship or sex education ... or whatever.

You only have to do it once on the record to defuse the issue. After that, you take the Hillary redirect strategy, i.e., "Of course, I've addressed that before, but the important point here, Jim, is that..."
posted by La Cieca at 1:23 PM on October 3, 2007

Well, you've got 15 years (roughly) to think about this. Chances are that if you stop now, the ability to prove it was you will diminish year by year. Contrary to the above advice, not everything on the internet is there forever (try doing some backtagging, folks), and the internet actually has a pretty short collective memory.

Plus, who would archive these chats?

More likely, an oppo would turn up that you'd had consensual sex with women. OH NO!
posted by klangklangston at 1:25 PM on October 3, 2007

Is there anything I can do to protect myself?

Yes, you can stop now. Get your picture offline, and stop writing down anything you wouldn't want to see printed in the paper. As for "casual encounters".... choose wisely. It's very possible some of those folks might come out of the woodwork should you become "famous", looking to tell (or sell!) their story.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:35 PM on October 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

*puts on his deerstalker cap*

Expect that, in the future, the Wayback Machine will have some kind of practical search feature as Google devours it (as it has devoured everything else). Thus, what you really have to worry about is the existence of these events being 1) documented on some form on the internet 2) in a manner connectable to your name. If you haven't been using aliases, bad for you.

Also, you might expect people not to snarfle up your chats and put them online, but it does happen with situations like bash.org, and occasionally cruel pranksters will do it, like that Craigslist guy. Expect that databases get hacked and posted, so perhaps your more legitimate dating site connections will also show up.

Realistically, the fact that you were once on match.com won't mean much in a couple of decades. Your casual encounters aren't impressive, either - pretty much every politician has had them. If you weren't married at the time and didn't ask the person in question to show up wearing an SS uniform with a squash tucked under one arm and a poodle in the other, it's not a big deal.

But, since you seem game for that kind of thing ... *puts on his robe and wizard hat* You're my kinda fun now.
posted by adipocere at 1:37 PM on October 3, 2007 [3 favorites]

Well, since my previous answer was deleted, I guess the mods didn't think I answered the question. So I'll answer it again in a long drawn out fashion.

If you're running for office in the future, I'm going to assume you're not going to run for another 20 years. In 20 years, your information will be buried in the internet. It won't disapear, it'll just become more and more difficult to track. Since you know you have these issues (and you're probably not remembering a million other things that could cause you issues), look at current examples and watch what they did. The two big examples involve drug use. Bill Clinton admitted to smoking pot and tried to dismiss it as "not inhaling". Obama has admitted to cocaine use in his autobiography. Has that stopped him from running for office? No. Has it cause him issues? A few but it hasn't slowed him down any.

And the reason why? They both pre-emptively planned for what would happen when this information became public and they owned how it was controlled and released. Clinton had problems when he lost control over various scandals - certain contingencies he didn't plan for and once they became public, he then spent his time and energy fighting against something that he should have planned for in the first place.

So what can you do today to deal with what you've done? You plan an apology or approach on how to handle the information. If admitting to it in a public, pre-political way is an option for you, then do it.

write your autobiography, admit what you did and claim you didn't inhale. own the problem before it becomes one. that's how you'll "solve" this issue in your future campaign.
posted by Stynxno at 1:37 PM on October 3, 2007

The current president/VP has several DUIs. Most people acknowledge that he used to use coke and had other substance dependencies. The last president was a dope smoking draft dodger with a record of sexual harassment. Have you paid any attention to the hilarious things that get brought up about senators and representatives?

Turns out that you can be a well documented bad person and get elected no problem. Just claim that after those wierd years in your 20s you found Jesus, AMEN! You would never do things like that to a goat again.

The best archived things are usenet type posts. Odds are good that nobody bothered to record your online sexy chats, that if they did they will missplace them in 20 years, that they can't prove that it was you, and that nobody would really care anyway.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 1:39 PM on October 3, 2007

On preview: do what La Cieca said.
posted by Stynxno at 1:39 PM on October 3, 2007

I have handled this professionally. I'm so happy you're asking now, instead of when it's too late!

This is how you handle this:

1) Take down any and all pictures of yourself. Don't email pictures of yourself to people. If that puts a crimp in your online-dating style, too bad.

2) Did you use your real name with people? Stop. Don't use an IM handle or email address that connects to your real identity. If you calling someone makes your name pop up on their cell screen, find out how to make that stop, and then make that stop.

3) Do not contact people you have interacted with in this way. Maybe they'll forget. You getting back in touch helps them remember.

4) If you're seriously interested in running for public office, start to be discreet now. The more years you can put between youthful indiscretions and the time you're up on a stage with your wife next to you, the less likely people are going to be able to dig up dirt.

5) Don't give people a reason to dig up dirt. Tons of famous people of various kinds have affairs all the time, and the media usually ignores these open secrets. Don't take positions that are so wildly hypocritical in relation to your past behavior that someone looking for a story has a reason to go digging through your trash. Don't attack other politicians for their personal sexual issues. Don't go overboard with claiming that you're lily-white.

6) When you're at a level where you have a campaign manager and some PR people, and you feel that you can trust them (and if you don't feel that way, you shouldn't have hired them) casually mention - in a closed-door meeting - that you maybe slept around a bit when you were younger. Don't couch it as "Hi, I picked up chicks on Craigslist", because that's a story. "Young politician was a bit of a womanizer when he was younger" isn't.

But you should tell your people so they can manage anything that comes up.

7) Be sure nothing comes up. Don't be a jerk to people you hook up with in a way that will make them want to come forward in fifteen years.

8) Don't take the advice above to casually mention that you were involved in adult chats. That would make you instantly unelectable and the butt of Daily Show jokes.

9) Basically what you're going for here is to stop adding to the pile of skeletons in your closet, and then to be so casual about the closet that people don't even know it exists. You can't make your past disappear, but you can make it so boring that people don't care.
posted by thehmsbeagle at 1:49 PM on October 3, 2007 [3 favorites]

listen to everything thehmsbeagle says. that's a best answer nominee.

did you use your real name? did you publicly display your picture? other identifiable markers? that's what you should watch out for. there is nothing you can do about some person coming forward ten years from now and claim they had sex with you to damage you but that's a pretty small story and at least the traditional media is going to want proof. I don't think that most of us keep chat logs that long unless we already plan on using them in a very long time.

anyway, be a bit stealthier. there are bigger fish to fry out there. don't get involved in dog fighting, arms deals or failed coups and don't get on the "no sex until marriage" bandwagon. that would be just asking for it.
posted by krautland at 1:58 PM on October 3, 2007

No one has suggested the obvious, uncynical, and libertarian answer here, which I realize has all the chance of being good advice that a dog has of being fed steak every day in a border town:

Represent the majority of us who have real lives; come clean about it; don't accept stigmatization; be daring and say "I smoked pot, I fucked around a bit and still think about sex even though I am [fill in the blank] years old, just like you, I even had a threesome" or whatever, and see if honesty, after all these years without it, doesn't win the day. Be authentic and brave. Be yourself.

Then I'd vote for you, at least.

I know, authenticity is so old. In fact, it's so old no one even knows what it looks like anymore, if we ever did.

The generations will change as you age. Our only hope is that society gets wiser about this fact: anyone who says they are pure of thought and deed is lying to you, stupid, incredibly fearful, inhuman, or all of the above.
posted by spitbull at 3:59 PM on October 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

Credit where credit is due: Jesus Christ.
posted by spitbull at 4:00 PM on October 3, 2007

"I smoked pot, I fucked around a bit and still think about sex even though I am [fill in the blank] years old, just like you, I even had a threesome" or whatever, and see if honesty, after all these years without it, doesn't win the day.

Win the day, maybe, but win the election? Heavens no.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:25 PM on October 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

Your past indiscretions will be less of a big deal if they really seem in the past. By the time you're running for office, have a good five years built up of not getting stupid drunk and/or drunken one-night stands.

Nothing more irritating than the squeaky-clean background who won't stop staring at your tits while he's on the campaign trail.
posted by desuetude at 4:33 PM on October 3, 2007

Agree with spitbull above; regardless of their political party, I find I don't really care about Candidate X's less-than-mundane background, but I definitely care about whether he's been totally honest about it and whether he's been a big hypocritical turd about those same issues in the present.

Case in point: Rudy Giuliani is a womanizer and a serial adulterer, which is a far worse thing than your mild online youthful dating fun. But Giuliani has never ever tried to pass himself (or his future administration) off as a some shiny paragon of Christian virtue, so he gets a bigger pass on that issue than if, say, someone like Mitt Romney were revealed to have cheated once long ago, which would be a bombshell.
posted by Asparagirl at 4:38 PM on October 3, 2007

Rudy Giuliani is a womanizer and a serial adulterer, which is a far worse thing than your mild online youthful dating fun. But Giuliani has never ever tried to pass himself (or his future administration) off as a some shiny paragon of Christian virtue, so he gets a bigger pass on that issue than if, say, someone like Mitt Romney were revealed to have cheated once long ago, which would be a bombshell.

Eh, they went after Clinton, and hard. But his problem was he did not have a "transformation", and indeed continued his ways. What hmsbeagle's advice above more generally states for 20 years down the line:

(1) Minimize damage by making the problem as generic as possible. Think of it like astrology. It is general and appeals in some part to everyone, so it keeps people interested. Fooling around in your 20s is universal, how it is down is unique. So "womanizing before your wife (who invariably tames you)" is better and more personal than "sex talks on Cupid.com." Why? The latter is unique and people will think, "well I may have been a slut, but that's just weird." They can't relate as readily. And you're not making things up to boot.

(2) Make sure a clear transformation took place. What is going through the public mind, perhaps wrongly, is that by going to sex chat rooms you have some sort of core problem inherent to yourself that will permeate your entire personality. Example: George Bush was a rich frat boy who had everything that life could offer. He was aimless, until Jesus came into his life. His whole personality changed and his decisions to try things became sound and grounded in a morality. If this comes out, you need to have your Jesus. 9/11 is Guliani's Jesus. Bill Clinton is Hillary's Jesus. You need your own, personal Jesus.
posted by geoff. at 4:55 PM on October 3, 2007

Represent the majority of us who have real lives; come clean about it; don't accept stigmatization; be daring and say "I smoked pot, I fucked around a bit and still think about sex even though I am [fill in the blank] years old, just like you, I even had a threesome" or whatever, and see if honesty, after all these years without it, doesn't win the day. Be authentic and brave. Be yourself.

No. Do not do this. Remember James Earl Carter, thirty-ninth President of the Yew-Nited States? The guy who admitted that he felt "lust in his heart?" And how much shit he took for his candor?

Learn from Jimmy's example. Don't be too human, too open.
posted by jason's_planet at 6:33 PM on October 3, 2007

To be clear, mine was a Modest Proposal. I quite realize the conventional, cynical wisdom that says you only win by lying. That's why there are professional political consultants (presumably including the one[s] commenting above): they help candidates lie craft their image so they can "win" elections.

My point? I'm sick of being lied to. I would vote for an honest wo/man above the slickest candidate, and I bet I am not alone. Jimmy Carter ran 30 years ago, and he ran as a religious man. There was no online dating, and his "admission" was more pathetically revealing of the closed life of a "Christian" person than it was revealing of a depraved character. Can you imagine, today, an uproar over a man saying he has felt "lust in his heart?" Please.

Oh, and Jimmy Carter *won* that election, by the way.

I'm just saying, some politician ought to *try* being totally honest as a strategy. There are millions of Americans who don't vote because they are utterly cynical and turned off by the lying bullshit that passes for political discourse in this country, the packaged candidates, the focus-group tested "messages," the "conversations" and "listening tours," the fake righteous morality. Someday, a candidate who smokes pot, has sex, lusts in his/her heart, has had a run in or two with cops, etc. will just come out and say, yeah, I'm normal like you. And that person just may win the hearts of the *majority* of Americans who don't vote because they're sick of the spinning professional consultant-run campaign machines.

So tell me it's crazy. It's no crazier than lying.
posted by spitbull at 4:14 AM on October 4, 2007

[a few comments removed, please don't turn this into a Jimmy Carter derail so early in the thread if you're not also answering the OPs question]
posted by jessamyn at 8:23 PM on October 7, 2007

Nthing thehmsbeagle's #5---and be 100% sure that the other parties agree that your encounters were consensual.
posted by brujita at 10:40 PM on October 7, 2007