Having damning material to blackmail a President would be a problem, even if the material comes from activity prior to time as a President. We do not want that.
The only problem with the damning material prior or not, is that it happened in the first place.
If a future president has something so damning they could use it for blackmail, we should all know and be thankful it was bought to public light.
Setting aside the general problems with being able to split the interests of a leader away from that of the country he leads, blackmail doesn’t entail simply releasing information, but rather agreeing to refrain from doing so in exchange for some action that would not otherwise have been taken. Say a President agrees to do something against the interests of the public in exchange for the non-disclosure of information.
The only problem with the damning material prior or not, is that it happened in the first place.
If a future president has something so damning they could use it for blackmail, we should all know and be thankful it was bought to public light.
Setting aside the general problems with being able to split the interests of a leader away from that of the country he leads, blackmail doesn’t entail simply releasing information, but rather agreeing to refrain from doing so in exchange for some action that would not otherwise have been taken. Say a President agrees to do something against the interests of the public in exchange for the non-disclosure of information.
Yes, this is a small part of why so-called “representative” democracy is a joke. It depends entirely on people who are completely controllable.
More reason to push to disclose as much information as possible, not give state protection to hide it.