OK, we’ve seen this story a bunch of times.
- Mr. Moneybags donates a bucket of money to Candidate A of Political Party 1.
- Mr. Moneybags is found out to be a scumbag… a harasser, a rapist, a murderer, athief, whatever
- Candidate A and Political Party 1 disavow Mr. Moneybags. They express shock and sorrow and all that.
- Candidate B and Political Party 2 try to make political hay out of the relationship between Mr. Moneybags and Candidate A.
- Included in that is a call for Candidate A to “give the money back” that Mr. Moneybags donated.
It’s at step 5 when I get lost. I have just enough empathy in me to kinda be able to pretend to understand what it’s like to be a politician who has found out that a financial supporter is a bigger dirtbag than most high-dollar-value political supporters. But presuming that the politician was honestly unaware of and uninvolved with the specific scumbaggery… *why* should the politician “give the money back?” To stretch the metaphor, let’s say someone came along and decided that my work on this blog, or my work with aerospace history or fiction writing or *whatever* was of sufficient value that they decided to gift me a million dollars. Go on, let’s say that. Let’s say that until it happens (I take PayPal, people).
And then let’s say that that benefactor is found out to have been a member of the Communist party, or is a Columbian drug lord, or a human trafficker, or a Chinese chef specializing in puppies and kittens. In that case it would certainly be valid for me to talk smack about said benefactor (though perhaps unwise in the “Columbian drug lord” instance), but how many people would make the demand that I “give the money back” or donate it to some charity or other?
As with most things political, I suspect the demand to “give the money back” is less about a demand to do the right thing, and more a cynical way to stick-to-to-’em. But it seems to happen all the time. It’s as old and moth-eaten as the claim of a suddenly retiring politician that the reason for the evacuation from public life is to “spend more time with family,” rather than hiding from that shiny new allegation hitting the press tomorrow.