Paul Manafort laundering $30,000,000.00 for the Trump campaign? You’re asking if he was “generally good” before that crime? Well, looking at his bio on Wikipedia I see he’s a “lobbyist, political consultant” and campaign manager of Trump’s election campaign. And “He was previously an adviser to the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole.”
He “co-founded the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone” – let’s check what that is – hmm, representing the interests of dictators, big tobacco, drug dealers…
I’m going to go with “he was probably an nasty piece of work well before 1980.
I don’t know that anyone is born bad. In my experience, almost everyone I’ve known well or heard share intimately/candidly (which actually includes quite a few people) has a good core self, but everyone also picks up some nasty angry/scared/terrified layers that are messed up and that can and do lead people to do awful things and even develop evil identities, even if there’s something good/human deep inside. All of the cases I know of where someone did horrible things (from murder and molestation up through white-collar crimes and bad relationship behavior), it’s had some roots in traumatic/abusive experiences during childhood. People who don’t get healed and then have kids dump that shit on their kids in multiple ways, leading to kids messed up by that. Our whole culture is full of it, and I put asshole corrupt white-collar criminals in that same category. I think most of them are raised to it, though I think also some people get corrupted one way or another along the way when they get into high political office and megacorporate positions.
In some cases they could be relatively blameless, like they get in office and then learn their family members may be killed off unless they vote for certain pro-corporate bills when requested. Or not even that – it may just be that they’re privy to other more subtle information about how it won’t work out if they are outspoken or take a stand on certain things. (Personally that’s my guess about Obama – he seems very sharp and well-intentioned but then repeatedly quietly failed to stand up for what he supposedly stands for in many cases.)