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Needless to say, this sort of intemperate language is to her discredit. All of us, not just candidates for public office, have an obligation to treat each other with some measure of dignity and respect. And while Buzreba noted in her apology later that day — on Twitter, natch — that she was a teenager at the time, it’s unclear how much we should distinguish the person she was then from the person she is now. She is, after all, 21.

But there’s the rub: by what measure do we determine whether a candidate has left the contentious philosophies of his or her past behind? How noxious do the remarks have to be? How much time must have passed? And do we really want to settle elections on the basis of a few unguarded comments a candidate might have made long before he or she entered public life?

“Gotcha” moments that used to happen in front of a reporter’s microphone, with the result that candidates on the campaign trail are scripted like never before. Now they are being unearthed in their social media histories — and with the large “oppo research” operations all parties now maintain, we’re likely to see campaigns increasingly dominated by these sorts of ritualized revelation-outrage-apology-retribution cycles. That’s what happened to now-independent Alberta MLA Deborah Drever after controversial photos — of her posing in a sexually risque position on an album cover, and with a t-shirt with a marijuana leaf — were circulated online. It also happened to former B.C. NDP candidate Ray Lam, who quit after an “inappropriate” photo of him touching a friend was extracted from his Facebook page. And it happened most recently to NDP candidate Morgan Wheeldon over past comments he made about Israel that weren’t in sync with the official NDP line.

Each of these situations is different, of course, but they share one common thread: a candidate unable to shed his or her past. Contrition is all very well, but there must surely also be some room for personal growth, maturation, even the odd change of heart. Equally, there must be room for a little tolerance of human frailty on the part of the voters — to say nothing of the media, paragons of virtue that we are. Otherwise, no one with a social media account will ever run for office.

National Post