So, we still don’t know if that was Ralph Northam in that awful blackface photo. This we learn from the final report on the photo controversy released today, which, shrug.
A Richmond law firm led the review for Eastern Virginia Medical School, which wishes that those of us who had never heard of it until the Feb. 1 revelation of the 1984 yearbook photo had still never heard of it.
For that matter, we have Northam, who as governor was never going to be a Mark Warner, a Tim Kaine, even a Terry McAuliffe, destined to be little more than a placeholder Democrat, term-limited by the Constitution, sure, but also by his own natural limitations.
Those limitations were, at least as of the early-afternoon hours of Feb. 1, his preternatural blandness.
His resume checked off in all the right areas – military service, a career in medicine, working his way up the ladder from the State Senate to a term as lieutenant governor.
But …
His main qualification, as voters headed to the polls in November 2017, was that he was the Democratic Party nominee in a state that as of a few years ago was purple, and is now just about solid blue, and he was running against a Republican who couldn’t decide how proto-Trump he should be between the summer and the fall.
In the immediate aftermath of the blackface photo first surfacing, Northam at first rushed to apologize for being in the photo, then, the next day, decided to backtrack on that, and claim that he wasn’t in the photo.
He survived the day, then the weekend, and somehow, some way, he’s still governor as we head to the Memorial Day weekend.
You’d think that he would have preferred this report to have been released sometime around 5 p.m.-ish on Friday, heading into the holiday weekend, so that it could have been buried as Virginians flocked to the beaches or mountains, or wherever they’re going to go to ring in summer.
Because now, we’re given plenty of opportunity to remind ourselves just how dadgum dumb our current governor is.
One, to have, all those years ago, apparently have assented to having that photo placed on his yearbook face. Two, to have copped to it, and then recant – seriously, whoever made that first call, to have him fall on the sword, should never work in politics again.
And then, now …
We still don’t know. Either he was in it, or he wasn’t.
This is the old political saw, Do you still beat your wife?
Problem for us Virginians is, this guy is still our governor.
Ol’ Governor I Thought That Was Me, But Now, Not.
Column by Chris Graham
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