Throwing Things at Your Staff is a Scandal

Senator Amy Klobuchar launched her Presidential campaign last week. As she launched, stories began to swirl about her abuse of her staff.

Some of it was garden variety – long hours, high expectations, stressful environment. Some of it was more scandalous, yet for some reason accepted – asking aides to do personal chores for example, which is forbidden by Senate rules, but far from uncommon.

She also threw objects (once even hitting a staffer in the head), publicly shamed and threatened to fire staffers for minor mistakes (think grammatical errors), reduced people to tears, and has even reportedly called the new bosses of departing employees to get their offers rescinded. Three people apparently turned down the opportunity to be manage her Presidential campaign – a prestigious gig – for fear of her abusive treatment.

Her practices are so bad that staffers have compared her to President Trump.

This scandal has ginned up some controversy, with some arguing that criticism of Klobuchar reflected a gendered double standard. No man, the narrative goes, would be pilloried for this sort of treatment.

That is probably true, but that does not mean that the appropriate response is to not hold Klobuchar to account. The appropriate response is to also hold male bosses to account.

If these reports are accurate (former staffers have spoken to publications off the record for fear of retribution), then Klobuchar isn’t just creating a high pressure/high expectation work environment. She’s creating an abusive work environment. Throwing objects and hitting your staffers is not normal. Constantly reducing your staff to tears is not normal.

I have plenty of ideological problems with Klobuchar as well. She’s been dismissive of Medicare-For-All, the Green New Deal, and free college programs. She seems far too tentative for my tastes.

But she fails a more basic test of competency and temperament. If she cannot treat the people who run her office with basic human decency, then she should not be President. I do not expect my President to be a saint. But I do expect any Democrat campaigning on treating people with respect and dignity to actually treat people with respect and dignity.