Jim Geraghty:
Last March, David Frum argued that democracy had seven guardrails, and the candidacy of Donald Trump had smashed through all of them.
I agree that those guardrails are in rough shape, but if Trump careened through them so easily, it was because a lot of trucks driven by other political leaders had smashed against them in preceding years. Those guardrails were coming off the hinges when the 2016 cycle began.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. You say partisan loyalty is driving political leaders to turn a blind eye to criminal behavior by members of their own party? Gee, do you think Bill Clinton’s perjury in the Lewinsky scandal was a key turning point? How about when Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner and Rep. Charlie Rangel discussed the need for more IRS enforcement at Geithner’s confirmation hearing, when both men ran into trouble with the IRS for failing to report income?
We now hear cries that President Trump has no respect for independent law enforcement. Those cries may very well be accurate, and they should be deeply troubling. But we didn’t get here overnight.
Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over requested documents. Holder’s Department of Justice sued Louisiana over its school choice program.
It’s totally normal to see state attorney generals announcing an effort to sue private companies for what the prosecutors define as fraudulent statements about climate change, right? That’s not politicizing law enforcement at all, right?
Right, right. It’s not like we’ve seen the Internal Revenue Service apologize for targeting ordinary Americans for their political beliefs. Where would Trump get the idea that law enforcement is supposed to put his interests first?
Again, it’s not just one party at fault. Trump isn’t the first Republican to walk through life with an enormous sense of entitlement or a difficulty distinguishing his personal interest from the interests of the people he’s supposed to represent.
For some reason, Bob McDonnell didn’t think there was anything wrong with a rich guy with business before the state showering him with expensive gifts. I wonder if he had ever heard of Bob Torricelli.
You say Donald Trump sometimes sounds like he’s nuts? If he is, he’s not even in the top five nuttiest figures to get elected recently. Remember Congressman David Wu dressing up in a tiger suit and campaigning at the airport? His staff did everything they could to assure his reelection even though they could see he was losing his marbles. Remember Congressman Eric Massa, the “tickling Congressman”? How about Anthony Weiner, does his behavior seem all that sane to you?
