Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Dr. StrangeTrump: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Character Questions (As Much)
If you had access to my Facebook account and went back far enough in my history, you would find out that I neither voted for Trump nor supported him at any point before his election. As time has gone by, I find myself spending more and more time defending him from critics; more accurately, I have spent time attacking his critics, not because I love Trump but because I have come to be confounded by some of them. Would I defend a similarly situated Democrat? No, in part because I wouldn’t like their policies (I also don’t agree with Trump on trade and immigration, but leave that aside). Does this mean I have gone over to a completely transactional view of politics or that I have given in to my cynicism about the federal government and the people that people it? Probably, but a fuller explanation is interesting (at least to me).
The Problem of Corruption and Lack of Character
Aside from the moral problems (I’ll come to that later), it’s helpful to consider why a lack of character in leadership and the attendant corruption is a problem from a practical perspective. Our system is based on certain ideals; when corruption creeps in, people become cynical and start to look for alternatives. If a system purports to idealize the free market but really delivers crony capitalism more often than not, people will start to experiment with alternatives that seem (from a certain point of view at least) fairer even though time and again they produce worse outcomes. Some people will always be looking for a “better” way regardless of how good things are, but corruption exacerbates the problem and makes people more receptive to alternatives.
Interestingly, corruption works the same way in bad ideological systems (such as totalitarian systems like Fascism, Nazism, and Socialism), with occasionally good results. Upon viewing of Schindler’s List, I noticed how integral petty corruption was to the salvation of his workers. If any of the soldiers, SS men, or guards decide to put their Nazi “ideals” above their desire for black-market cigarettes, watches, or liquor, everyone dies.
So, corruption damages systems, whether that system is good or bad. Is our present system worth protecting from corruption? I find myself increasingly horrified to learn that the answer is something on the order of “not really” or more accurately “not completely.” This isn’t a call to a “burn it all down” revolution, but it is a call to rethink what we should and shouldn’t preserve if we find ourselves with an opportunity to renegotiate our present norms and assumptions. In this, Trump’s presidency has been clarifying in that everyone is revealing what their real beliefs and goals are.
What is exasperating about Never Trump conservatives is that they seem to be willing to abandon what I thought were fairly orthodox conservative viewpoints in order get Trump. Max Boot is the most cartoonish, self-defeating example, but the problem is more general than that. We used to talk about public choice theory and the problem of agencies taking on a life of their own with their own agenda; now we lionize career bureaucrats and demand everyone assume that they are just doing their job in good faith. (Side Note: I’ve never bought into the “Obama corrupted this agency or that agency” argument. The FBI is what it always was: J. Edgar Hoover’s political intelligence and intimidation outfit) We used to worry about the scope of the administrative state; now we get upset when Trump exercises his pardon power (which the Constitution vests in him alone) without running it by someone in a basement office at DOJ. I’d rather see Sheriff Joe in jail, but it was revealing that people seemed to think the pardon power effectively belongs to someone else.
If we had the system of government laid down in the Constitution, Trump’s character would be more problematic. Alas, we haven’t had that system here since 1929 (or earlier). As it stands, it’s number 103 on the list things that concern me.
Good Government as Anti-Constitutional Government or Threats: Existential and Otherwise
“So what does concern you?” asked no one at all. Primarily that so many have taken such an anti-Constitutional pose, either because they hate or fear Trump so much or because they really were ok with rule by the administrative state all along. In part, it comes down to which threats you believe are existential and which are not.
Trump is problematic, but our system has remedies for that, the most prominent being impeachment and defunding. Congress has conceded plenty of its prerogatives over the last hundred years to the executive, but in a system like ours that does not assume that good people will always be in charge and depends on checking ambition with ambition, it is hard to fault the executive (any of them really) for taking advantage of what has been freely given by another branch. Absent dropping a nuclear bomb (which seems less and less likely as time goes by), what Trump does can be checked if only Congress was willing.
But Congress doesn’t want to do that because its hard; instead, we are treated to the anti-Constitution spectacle of the executive branch investigating itself, with some wanting to make it so that Trump can’t fire is own subordinate. Let’s be clear why: so that when the inherently political act of impeachment is discussed, Congress can avoid responsibility by pretending to defer to the supposedly apolitical experts. Some see this as necessary because of the unique threat Trump represents, but I see them as modern-day Ropers, willing to cut down all of the laws in order to get at the Devil. Morrison v. Olsen provides no cover here, as that case dealt with a lapsed statute that created an officer controlled by the judicial branch rather than the executive.
We could discuss here that much of what we think of as good, honest government is really an invention of early nineteenth century progressive activists (an ethos most conservatives have bought into, wittingly or not), but that is a topic of another day. What matters here is that the Constitution is not some guarantor of good government; it merely dictates with whom the final word on certain matters is vested. When the question is whether or not to have a criminal investigation, or fire an executive officer, or the like comes up, the only person who gets to have the final word on such matters is Trump, for good or ill. People got upset when Eric Holder said he was Obama’s wingman, but that is actually closer to the original understanding of what the Attorney General’s role was than the current view of the DOJ as some kind of independent agency. People want to purge politics from government, but I’m sorry, politics is how we make decisions in this country. If you want to live somewhere where decisions are made by people unaccountable to public pressure, then go live in a dictatorship. That isn’t to say that I would vote for a president who said he would only prosecute Democrats during his term or something similar, but if people elect someone who makes that promise then that’s what we will have. Again, there are ways of handling that scenario if it ever happens (resignations and refusals to serve, defunding, impeachment, etc.). But to have unelected officials put themselves, their opinions, and their agendas above those of the elected president represents a rejection of the Constitutional order. The Rule of Law, whatever it means, has to at least begin with the word long written down: “[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Trump abusing the pardon power, for example, may be a violation of the Rule of Law in the abstract, but there are concrete, set in stone ways of dealing with him: impeachment, electoral defeat, etc. If we don’t have the collective political will to do either, then we deserve what we get. It would be the final abandonment of what is left of our Constitutional order (and itself a violation of the Rule of Law) to invent new ways of dispensing with Trump or curtailing his power.
A Christian Perspective
I mentioned we would discuss morality later and here it is: If you were to say that it was important to have men of strong character lead this nation, I would have agreed with you in the past and I still have a preference for such men; now, as I grow in my faith I have become less and less interested in politics. Conservativism has a strain of “American as God’s Chosen Instrument/New Israel” that I have increasingly come to reject, to the extent that I prefer to skip church on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July so I can miss the calls to rededicate myself to America (and maybe also God). I mean, is the Church universal or its is something that history books 500 years from now will describe as part of an American civic culture that failed? In any event, the need to associate American government with Christian leadership has led many Christians into one of two methods of dealing with politics:
- Effective Disenfranchisement: Refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils. (the David French Method)
- Witness Gambling: Willingness to gamble your otherwise effective witness by either (1.) pretending your candidate is a Christian even if you don’t believe they are, or (2.) hoping that they really are a Christian now and that past performance won’t predict future results. (the Franklin Graham shuffle)
I chose the first method last election, but I am not convinced that it is necessary anymore. If I am right that American is not God’s chosen instrument (at least in the way some think of it), my choice of president has much less gravity. Conceptually, I should be able to vote for someone whose policies are best for the Church in America (for example, by not requiring religious agencies to place children with homosexuals for adoption) even if they personally are not some Christian exemplar. I may be wrong in this and am open to arguments in the comments.
Well, there is my Magnum Opus on why Trump doesn’t both me as much as he otherwise would. There was a discussion in another post about how writers like Mona Charen and Jonah Goldberg don’t necessarily reveal a preference for the established order over Trump simply because they constantly challenge him; that is fair enough as far as it goes, but what you choose to rehash reveals what your priorities actually are. This is related to why I feel that otherwise effective charges of “Whataboutism” ring hollow: the fact that Obama or someone else might have done the same thing is not a complete defense of Trump, but it does make clear that a lot of what he does isn’t new and serves as a call to focus on the fresh or more important outrages of the day (which may very well be caused by Trump but are more often than not the work of his opponents) before doubling back to take care of things that, while wrong, have been accepted in the past.
Published in General
Some of the FBI team who investigated Trump and Clinton clearly had serious ethical problems and I’m glad to see them go. I’m forgetting the details, but I recall that McCabe revealed himself to be awful as well.
Comey’s an insufferable self-promoter and operator, but I wouldn’t put him in the same category. If he had been a Clinton/Obama lackey, he would have found a way to make the non-announcement of charges in July 2016 fizzle and wouldn’t have set himself up for the Wiener disclosure (no pun intended). A lot of leftists blame Comey for contributing to Clinton’s loss and they may well be right.
I haven’t formed a full opinion of Mueller. @gumbymark has made some excellent points about some of his past behavior that is cause for concern, but he’s led a pretty tight ship since becoming special counsel and he (rightly) fired people like Strzok once their crap was revealed.
The Leftist corruption is worse and more damaging.
Realistically, that people whose votes can’t be taken for granted hold the president’s feet to the fire. Trump responds to incentives, good and bad. If we can pressure him to pass 25% more substantive policy while giving us 25% fewer unforced errors, that would be great.
I’m a critic of corporate welfare, and I plan to keep repeating things that people already know. Doing so has its risks, of course.
Totally fair and, I might add, productive.
I think nearly everyone on the Right was hoping Trump’s tariffs were a temporary “art of the deal” gambit to secure better trade conditions for American companies on the international market. But, the longer it goes on (with the attendant uncertainty you mention), the worse it seems as either a gambit or a policy. We conservatives should unite to apply pressure to Trump to fix the problem.
So, see? We found an area of agreement without having to address the President’s personality/character issues. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
I’m giving Jonah and Mitt the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their intentions. I absolutely believe they believe what they’re doing is a necessary and good service to the country. I’m not exactly clear on how it helps (thus, my questions), but I believe they believe it does.
However, the effect on the leftist organs in and out of government opposing Trump and the deplorables is to be able to point to right-wingers who find Trump unacceptable — “unsuitable” — for the office he holds at the will of the people. That would seem, um, unhelpful, to put it mildly.
Ah, well maybe that “insufficient” and “sycophantic” aren’t antonyms explains a few things. I didn’t say you were asking for sycophantic loyalty.
Even non-sycophantic loyalty can come at a cost that’s sometimes not worth paying.
To give a humorous example, as a child I was fiercely loyal to my parents. Sycophancy is servile self-seeking, and I wouldn’t call my loyalty to my parents that. Still, it sometimes had unfortunate consequences. Like the time I was about eight, and answered some questions from Canadian border patrol as if I were being interrogated by the Stasi. How dare they ask me to “inform” on my parents, my eight-year-old brain thought. Meanwhile, the Canadians’ reaction to getting such outraged hostility from an eight-year-old was naturally, “So, what, exactly, do these parents have to hide?…” I made life harder on my parents than it had to be that day.
More seriously, a lot of folks whose loyalty ends up being complicit in covering up wrong aren’t sycophants. They’re merely decent people forced to make a moral judgment, and who unwittingly assign those they are loyal to more benefit of the doubt than it turns out was deserved. Take, for example, abuse that gets swept under the rug in churches because decent people, quite understandably, don’t want to expose an institution they’re loyal to to scandal unless they could be more certain than they are that the scandal is deserved. “Whistleblowers” who are outright lying about whatever they’re “blowing the whistle” on commit disgusting evil. Whistleblowers who blow the whistle on too little evidence may not be doing witting evil, but they’re certainly committing great folly. Loyalty helps us not do these things, but at the risk of letting us drift into not calling out the evil we most likely have seen when we’ve seen it.
People who drift into letting a wrong fester out of loyalty often aren’t so confident in what they know to call their putting loyalty above whistleblowing sycophancy. People who drift into this often aren’t, individually, all that evil for doing so: their hesitancy is often understandable, often sprung from noble motives. Nonetheless, those who drift into this and have the bad luck to have gotten it wrong can end up unwittingly complicit in great damage.
Let’s try this with another crime. “I’m not saying he’s a burglar; I’m sure his heart is in the right place. I’m just his actions could cause other people to think he’s breaking and entering a dwelling at night for the purpose of committing a felony.”
Describing someone’s actions with a phrase like “giving aid and comfort to [enemies]” is to call him a traitor. If that’s not what you meant, I would suggest rethinking your phrasing.
This risk in having a hobby horse is that your pressing the issue can lead you to producing commentary that is “bad,” not from a “I disagree with you” perspective but from a “your no longer an effective commentator” perspective. I’m not saying this of anyone I particular, but if Trump has driven you insane and that effects the quality of your output, that’s a different issue than the fact that you disagree with him.
There are two posts that illustrate my point about otherwise competent commentators making mistakes because of Trump.
Peter Robinson made a post about Romney’s op-ed about Trump were he solicited comments about Romney’s central premise: that the president is a moral leader of the nation. I think this conversation is important because it gets at two key questions: Does the president’s character actually have an out sized impact on the general public? Are the people meant to look at the president that way in our system of government? I suspect I can tell a lot about how people feel about Trump by how they answer these questions, and I’m interested in people’s arguments on this.
He also made a post about Trump’s tweet about Romney that seemed like a HAWT TAEK to me. It sparked a debate about whether Trump’s win was Yuge or not Yuge and whether it was fair to compare the size of Romney’s senate win to Trump’s presidential win in the same state.
It all seemed rather pointless. Last time I checked, the HAWT TAEK had more than twice as many comments as the, to me, more interesting topic.
I think it’s possible for criticism, even if truthful, to become excessive. But whether or not criticism has crossed into that territory is a prudential question, one where equally moral people may disagree depending on their own experience of what’s worked — or hasn’t worked — in the past.
I don’t think much these days about Trump’s character as a whole these days, and what overall label it deserves.
I can see how traits that I would generally consider negative might have a salutary effect under the right circumstances. For example, @tommeyer and I got to discussing the other day under what circumstances shamelessness can be a positive trait. As Tom put it,
and I agree.
That said, how much of a salutary effect shamelessness can have, and at what cost, also strikes me as a prudential question.
Likewise, how much loyalty is “enough” loyalty in politics seems to me more of a prudential rather than principled matter. Loyalty certainly plays a role in how party politics works — especially for elected officials who do the nitty-gritty work of building this or that coalition at this or that moment. But to what end and at what cost?