The NY Times is having a complete meltdown over the Manafort guilty decisions and Cohen pleading guilty, along with his accusations. Because this was the entire point of Muellers misbegotten investigation. There was no collusion to find. If there was, you’d think they would have had something by this point. So, we get
- Congress, Do Your Job by the Editorial Board which features the hateful racist Sarah Jeong
- Search Your Souls (what’s left of them), Republicans by Excitable Charles Blow
- Donald Trump’s High Crimes and Misdemeanors by anti-Trump “conservative” Brett Stephens (I’ve yet to see anything conservative from him)
- Can Michael Cohen Bring Down Trump? by Trump hater Ken White
all based on process crimes, most of which have zero to do with Trump. But, they won’t give up, because Trump beat Hillary fair and square according to the rules, and they just cannot get over it. But, there’s another opinion piece at the Times of interest by Charles R. Kesler
Breaking Norms Will Renew Democracy, Not Ruin It
Hardly a day goes by without President Trump being accused of breaking a presidential norm or two, doing something that no president has ever done — nor, it’s implied, ever ought to do.
He tweets. He runs down the F.B.I., the intelligence community, his own attorney general. He makes fun of other politicians. He hires and fires cabinet secretaries, lawyers and communications people with abandon. He revokes a former C.I.A. director’s security clearance. He fails to disclose his tax returns. He picks his Supreme Court nominees from a list prepared by outside groups. He alternately threatens and sweet talks foreign despots.
Guilty as charged — but so what? All norms are not created equal. Hence breaking norms is neither good nor bad except as the norms themselves are good or bad. We elect presidents partly to separate the wheat from the chaff: to energize government by shedding or retiring norms that no longer serve the public good, and by adopting fresh ones that do.
What follows is a discussion of the U.S., the Constitution, and norms and conventions. For instance, Thomas Jefferson decided that giving a yearly speech to Congress was to monarchy, and just sent his yearly address on paper. Presidents did the same for the next 112 years. Most presidents didn’t leave the nation to conduct diplomacy. And much more, worth the read. Then we get to
Most of Mr. Trump’s alleged transgressions, measured by those standards, seem picayune. They offend against the etiquette of modern liberalism and modern liberal governance, not the Constitution. For example, choosing from a list of potential Supreme Court nominees prepared by outside experts at his request, before deliberating with his advisers and interviewing several finalists, hardly amounts to a dereliction of presidential duty. And haven’t several Democrats subsequently called for a new court-packing plan to retake control of the judiciary — a far greater norm-buster than anything Mr. Trump has done or proposed?
Disturbing our NATO allies’ slumber seems more like due diligence than recklessness. Mr. Trump’s manner of treating members of his own administration is often regrettable, but then for his entire term so far he has been entangled in a pitched battle with elements of the executive branch nominally under his own authority — a frustration no previous president has had to face. Must he, in addition, acquiesce in the permanent security clearances of the previous administration’s spymasters, when they seek to wield these as licenses to kill his foreign policy and his whole presidency? Hard to imagine Jackson or F.D.R. sitting still for that.
Besides, future presidents will be free to ignore or repudiate Mr. Trump’s views and his blunt manner of doing business. This occupant of the White House seems to enjoy breaking norms, and he has been conspicuously more successful at breaking them than at devising and blessing new ones for our troubled times.
At the end of the day, Liberals are just unhinged that Trump is in the White House and doing things they do not like. Because they are only tolerant when people toe their rigid line.
