White Men Keep Doing The Bare Minimum

Graham Platner and Justin Bieber and Hunter Biden and RFK jr.

Graham Platner has some compelling rhetoric. He says some things that many voters, like me, are understandably eager to hear. He calls the genocide in Gaza exactly what it is and he presents himself anti-billionaire. He takes the position of a working-class Washington outsider, an oyster farmer who understands ordinary people because he once worked with his hands. But like generations of white men before him, he barely reaches the lowest possible bar for being a United States Senator.

There have been red flags from the beginning. His story and framing as working class hero is curated. He grew up the son of an attorney who became an assistant district attorney and a restaurateur. He attended an elite prep school. None of those facts disqualify him from public office. Plenty of capable public servants come from privilege. What is deeply revealing, is the decision to sideline his privilege for populism and hope nobody notices the editing.

Then came the tattoo controversy. Reports surfaced that he had a Nazi-associated tattoo from his time in the Marines and that it was only covered after it became a political liability. Again, people can change. They can reject past beliefs. They can confront mistakes. But it matters whether the change precedes exposure or follows it. One suggests conscience. The other suggests campaign management. And more image curation.

And now, as the primary approaches, additional reporting has emerged about his treatment of women: his wife catching him sexting with other women, stories from former partners describing him as manipulative, aggressive, or threatening. These are allegations, and allegations deserve scrutiny. But the pattern is emerging. And the pattern is not a single youthful error. The pattern is a man whose curated public image keeps colliding with private conduct. A lifetime of observation teaches me that giving sleazy men more power won’t make them any better. In fact, it almost always makes them worse.

The maddening part is he is still the better option than Susan Collins for voters who oppose Donald Trump’s agenda. Collins has spent years cultivating a reputation for moderation while ultimately supporting almost all of the major priorities of the Trump era.

So here we are again, in a hostage situation. A clear douche versus a fascist enabler. Our democracy is the envy of the world!

Earlier this year, the internet spent several days celebrating Justin Bieber for appearing at Coachella in his underwear, holding a laptop, and essentially singing along to his own music videos. People called it raw. Vulnerable. Honest. Meanwhile, if we think back to Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella performance, we saw one of the most technically demanding, meticulously choreographed, culturally ambitious festival sets ever staged. The gap in effort is enormous.

Once again the discourse treats minimal effort from a famous white men as evidence of his depth and growth. Disorganization becomes a sign of genius. Visible struggle becomes a personality trait. The same behavior from women or people of color is frequently interpreted as unprofessionalism, instability, emotionality or incompetence.

This is the asymmetry of American life. A white man can arrive underprepared and still be credited with hidden complexity. Everyone else is expected to arrive over-qualified, over-worked and over-prepared just to be considered legitimate enough to even ask permission to be heard.

The current administration is the clearest example of the infinite-second-chance economy for white men. Donald Trump can rack up bankruptcies, scandals, lawsuits, and failed ventures and remain the central figure of American life. RFK Jr.’s only qualifications for being Secretary of Health appear to be having contracted every communicable disease on the planet. J.D. Vance is a career long flip-flopper with the charisma of an aardvark’s ballsack. Pete Hesgeth is like if a Call of Duty lobby from 2012 grew flesh and started drinking Four Loko for breakfast.

The point is not that Platner and Bieber are are identical to these figures. The point is that the threshold for continued relevance remains extraordinarily low for white men. Failure, contradiction, and controversy often function as fuel rather than disqualification.

Meanwhile, the internet will occasionally crown a new folk hero because he tweeted a few jokes that annoyed the right people. Hunter Biden posted a couple of trolling messages on Twitter and suddenly the liberal white women of social media treat him like a rebellious antihero. Whatever one thinks of Hunter Biden, the reaction reveals something about the culture: a white man can perform a modest act of antagonism and receive outsized admiration simply because audiences are hungry for symbols of resistance.

All of these men are the kind that would hassle you at the gas station after 9pm for a cigarette or light or a dollar. And yet they ascend. They rise. They have unlimited second chances. They accrue power and money without trying.

They can be sloppy, loud, impulsive, self-destructive, and unserious. Yet those qualities are often seen as authenticity. The rough edges become evidence that they are “real people.”

Imagine how differently the same behaviors would be interpreted in a woman running for office. Imagine the scrutiny applied to every Black candidate, or an immigrant candidate, a Muslim candidate, or a queer candidate. White men, by contrast, are often allowed to remain individuals. Everyone else is treated as a representative of their ethnicity, gender or sexuality.

This is why the bare minimum can become politically profitable. A white man does not have to embody excellence to be considered plausible. He doesn’t even need to avoid appearing catastrophically dangerous. Competence is irrelevant. Charisma helps. Confidence helps even more.

Part of the problem is psychological. Americans are exhausted. We are inundated with scandals, lies, crises, and outrage. Under those conditions, the electorate starts searching for relief rather than greatness. Every candidate sounds coherent after listening to Donald Trump for an hour. A politician who occasionally criticizes his own party can feel courageous..

Low expectations create the illusion of high potential.

There is also a deeper cultural habit at work. American mythology remains obsessed with the flawed white male protagonist: the troubled genius, the redeemed sinner, the antihero, the man who breaks rules because he sees something others do not. We have consumed this story in particularly large doses this generation.

Walter White, Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Deadpool, Dexter, House

We have been taught that brilliance often arrives wrapped in chaos. Sometimes that is true. Often it is not. Sometimes chaos is just chaos.

A woman in public life , if she is lucky, might be rewarded for preparation, discipline, and consistency. A white man will be rewarded for confidence, storytelling, and the appearance of conviction. One group is asked to prove competence repeatedly. The other is often granted competence provisionally and allowed to keep it until the evidence becomes overwhelming. And often even after that.

This helps explain why figures like Platner remain viable even as troubling information accumulates…