We elect politicians, not their children

An ambulance arrived at a U.S. senator’s house recently and hauled his 14-year-old daughter away for self-inflicted stab wounds.

When I read that news report earlier this month, I just cringed.

That child didn’t choose to be a politician’s daughter. And her problems shouldn’t be exhibited in the news media for all the world to discuss. Fortunately, the staff of the senator, who represents a southwestern state, said her wounds were not life threatening.

Most every news report I’ve read identified the child and her father.

I’m sorry, that’s a line I won’t cross.

News organizations shouldn’t write about the travails of politicians’ children unless it would otherwise be newsworthy or the parent misuses their power to get the kid out of trouble.

I have three daughters ages 12, 14 and 17. It’s never been easy to be a teenager and its especially hard when you have a parent who holds elective office. Your life is in a fishbowl.

Don’t believe me? Well, during every election cycle, I receive phone calls from people telling me about the alleged transgressions of the children of politicians.

Yes, every election.

Sometimes the folks who make these calls are political operatives. But often they are ordinary people wanting to feel better about their own screwed up family by pointing out the faults in someone else’s.

This year, I received a call from a member of a prominent Democratic family who reported that the son of two Republican officeholders was ticketed for underage drinking when he was a high school student.

I looked up the case, found that the judicial system treated the young man like just about everyone else and I declined to do a story.

A few years ago, the son of a prominent Springfield politician was arrested on a minor drug charge. I was sitting at the kitchen table reading about the arrest in the city’s daily newspaper when my sister in-law, who had taught the young man, began hollering, “You’d better not write a story about him. He’s a good kid!”

I replied that I didn’t consider it newsworthy. In fact, I believe the competing newspaper’s reporting to be gratuitously cruel. Still, my sister in-law eyed me with a bit of suspicion.

When one news organization does something, often everyone in the industry gets painted with the same broad brush.

When I was a young reporter in Galveston, Texas, the son of a judge was arrested for stalking his ex-girlfriend. During the preliminary hearing, the defendant’s father, who was sitting in the back of the courtroom, rose and addressed the presiding judge as a “friend of the court.” He asked for leniency for his son from a fellow member of the judiciary.

I reported the entire incident because it struck me that his father was misusing his influence to see that his son received preferential treatment.

In 1991, when I was reporter in Iowa, the 16-year-old son of Gov. Terry Branstadt was driving home from his part-time job when he was involved in a head-on collision that killed two people.

A two-person fatality would normally warrant a short story with the names of everyone involved. Ultimately, Eric Branstad was ticketed for improper lane usage and fined $15.

In the end, media reporting allowed voters to decide whether the prosecutor in the case handled the matter appropriately.

When I was a legislative reporter, a state senator I covered adopted a troubled boy who had been a ward of the state. It can’t be easy to be raising a kid in an environment where everyone knows your family’s business.

For years, I would receive phone calls from the senator’s political adversaries about his boy’s latest transgressions. The malicious calls were an effort to hurt the senator by attacking his child.

I never printed any of the assertions. Why? Because the child isn’t the one holding public office and none of us gets to choose our parents. Besides that, it’s got to be hell to be raised in an environment where everyone knows your mistakes.

In 2007, the son took his own life. I was glad I never reported on any of his transgressions. My conscience is clear.

Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis once wrote in the Washington Post: “Unfortunately, for political sons and daughters, the fear of how you will be perceived as you go about your life, as you pursue your dreams and goals, underlies everything. It’s a toxic way to live. You have to constantly second-guess yourself, as in, ‘If I were anyone else, this would be a great opportunity, but it’s probably just being offered because of who my father is, and even if it isn’t, it could look that way.’”

No one should be forced to live that way.

• Scott Reeder, a staff writer for Illinois Times, can be reached at sreeder@illinoistimes.com.