“We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. . .. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.” (attributed to M. Stanton Evans, Samuel T. Francis and others)
The year 2016 is one in which both parties have run their pennants, one marked with a big S and the other with a huge E, to the top of their respective flagpoles. When the wind is strong enough, you can hear the two flags snapping in the breeze.
Let’s take the Stupid Party first.
When I was a lad growing up in northern New Jersey, I joined the Boy Scouts. Our troop ran the way a lot of things did in New Jersey. The kids whose fathers were in charge of the troop got their merit badges through “pull”. Their dads would fill out the necessary paperwork and the badges were issued in due course. The rest of us had to actually undertake the tasks required to get the badge.
One of the badges had to do with community service. A local charity was looking to the Boy Scouts to help drum up publicity for a fundraiser. Our job was to get local businesses to put signs in their store-front windows advertising the event. We were divided into pairs and sent off to improve our community through our good works.
My partner and I walked into a small dry-cleaning shop and politely asked if we could put a sign in the front window. We didn’t know that we were the tenth pair of Scouts to make the identical request that day. The dry cleaning guy groaned. What he might have said, had he been in a better mood, was something like “Boys, thanks so much for trying to help your community. Unfortunately, you are the tenth pair of scouts to make the same request today. I am already committed, but maybe you could try one of the many other stores on the street, see if they can help you.”
What he actually said was, “Whaddaya bothering me for? There’s enough people for everybody!”
When we got out of the store, I started laughing and I didn’t stop until I got home. When I quoted the guy to my parents, they started laughing. For years, if I wanted to get a laugh in our house I could say “There’s enough people for everybody”. It never failed (with an admittedly easy audience).
What’s even funnier, as I look back on it, is that I knew exactly what he meant. If you have lived for any time in the New York metropolitan area, you’ll know the kind of person I’m talking about. There is a certain communication style common in that area, where the speaker leaps from point to point, leaving it to others to figure out the logic, or lack of it, that underlies his or her (but usually his) commentary. There is a certain skill required to decode the words used by these excitable people and their logic is often called into question by others with the same communication style. The resulting dialogues make heavy use of sarcasm, generalization, and reductio ad absurdum.
I think Donald Trump is a person of this type. He has something complicated he wants to say, he has a very short time to engage his audience, and the details might not hold their attention. They certainly don’t hold his. When complaining about the judge overseeing his Trump University case, he could have talked about the specifics of the rulings the judge has made and suggested that the judge is biased against him. The judge has been a member of an organization that provides legal aid to illegal immigrants. Trump has said he is in favor of more rigorous enforcement of the laws prohibiting illegal immigration. He could have emphasized the disagreement and suggested that the judge is giving vent to an ingrained bias.
He might have been wrong about those accusations, but he would have been arguing from known and agreed facts. Instead, he said the judge was “Mexican” and “hates Donald Trump.” Had he spelled his points out and skipped the ethnic identification of the judge, he might have avoided some of the charges of racism that have been aimed at him. Some, not all. There is a segment of the commentariat that is going to accuse him of racism in any case.
Some, not all, of his other outlandish statements yield to this treatment. Take his proposed ban on entry by Moslems into the U.S. He might have made his point (if it in fact was his point) this way: “Sharia law is incompatible with republican self-government. Our government is based on the principle stated in the Declaration that the people have the right to manage their own government ‘organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness’. A system of law that looks to divine revelation, one that treats as apostasy all human efforts to adopt laws inconsistent with or beyond the scope of that revelation, is not appropriate to a free people. We have no objection if other nations wish to organize their laws under the principles of Sharia. Saudi Arabia offers a fine example of what such a system would look like and we recommend it to those who believe that Sharia offers the best path toward a stable, prosperous, and happy society. Iran is another. If you find those models appealing, please feel free to relocate to a country that provides you with the opportunity to live under a government and a system of law of which you approve. However, we do not wish to inject into our political discourse an element that is aimed at replacing our system of republican self-government with rules that are derived from an authority that we do not recognize.
“We know that many Moslems do not believe in, or do not favor, the application of Sharia law. With them, we have no argument and we are happy to see them practice their religion under the same system of ordered liberty under which we practice ours, or for that matter decline to practice any religion. We need to find some way, consistent with our tradition of religious liberty, to deny entry to those whose political, not religious, convictions commit them to work toward the imposition of Sharia law. We reject them whether they are jihadi terrorists who seek to achieve their goals through violence or Islamists who will try to achieve their objective through stealth or other non-violent methods. We will not be unfair to anyone on the basis of religious belief but we reserve the sovereign right to exclude anyone whose political views are at odds with the fundamental principles of self-government on which our society is built.”
That takes too long to think, let alone say. A lot of the audience is going to get lost or bored. (Not anyone reading this, needless to say, but we all know people.) It’s easier to just shout out that we need to ban all Moslems “until our government figures out what in the hell is going on.” Could be a long wait.
Similarly, Mr. Trump’s attitude toward a physical barrier between the United States and Mexico is not wildly irrational. There is reason to think that the population that enters the country illegally is somewhat more prone to commit crimes than the typical legal resident.[1] The research is complicated and the conclusions are tentative. It’s easier to say that “Mexico is sending their criminals across the border.” Saying that also ignores the fact that about half of the individuals who are in the U.S. illegally entered the country on a visa. Building a wall might solve the one-half of the problem that walks across the southern border, but it still leaves the country vulnerable.
Again, it takes too long to say that. The speaker and the audience don’t have the time, the patience, or the interest.
And a number of Mr. Trump’s shenanigans do not yield to the generous treatment that I have suggested for some of his positions. It is unforgivable to mock a disabled person. Decent people do not attack others because of their appearance. It is not acceptable to attribute an aggressive debate question to the moderator’s bodily functions.
Add to that the candidate’s brazen ignorance of the benefits of trade between nations, his stated preference for extending the reach of libel laws notwithstanding the First Amendment (on which question he may, if elected, be able to find common ground in the United States Senate, where every Democratic Senator has voted to limit the scope of the amendment), his limited understanding of the issues of life vs. choice, and you have someone who has demonstrated that he does not have sufficient intellectual depth or emotional stability to qualify him for the high and distinguished office he seeks.
And yet, we have to consider his likely opponent in November. Let’s take a look at the standard bearer of the evil party.
Say this for Donald Trump. Despite his public presentation as a crude, loutish, inarticulate, and superficial candidate, there is a small but growing brace of intelligent, articulate, public intellectuals who vouch for him[2]. The private Trump, they tell us, is far more impressive than the public one.
On the other hand, if you suggest that Hillary Clinton is a dishonest person, totally lacking in personal integrity, I don’t think you will hear a firm contradiction from her supporters. It would be a bold commentator who would offer a direct defense of her honesty. Instead, the response from her public defenders is of the “There’s no smoking gun” variety. They’ll say this even when there is a smoking gun, like the private server in the bathroom closet in Colorado. In fact, there is an arc to the various defensive postures that her supporters will take over the course of any given scandal. We start with “Let’s let the investigation play out and see where it leads before we rush to judgment.” We continue with “The investigation is nothing but a fishing expedition, a partisan attempt to smear a political opponent.” We may make a quick stop at “This is straight out of the Republican play book, part of the vast right-wing conspiracy that has been out to get her for the last 25 years.” We conclude with “This is old news. There is no smoking gun. It’s time to move on.” Until the next one.
The point is, you will not hear her defenders say that this honest woman, a model of integrity, the very mold of honor, is being besmirched, the way you will occasionally hear Donald Trump’s supporters say that, in private, he is personable, intelligent, and articulate.
Perhaps the difference is that it is possible to be intelligent in private but a lout in public. We can always hope that the private person will emerge to replace the public one. If a person’s public conduct is lacking in integrity, his or her good behavior in private doesn’t carry much weight. That is one of the connotations of “integrity”.
Rather than wander through her more than 40 years of public conduct, let’s focus on only one incident. On the night of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, after the attack on the Benghazi consulate, Mrs. Clinton sent an email to her daughter describing the incident as an “Al Qaeda style attack”. The next night, September 12, she sent an email to the Egyptian Prime Minister, telling him that the incident was a planned attack and not a reaction to a video.
At some point in the next few days, the Obama administration decided that the offensive video was the explanation for the Benghazi attack. Susan Rice went on five Sunday news programs on September 16 to repeat the administration position about the video.
In between the attack on the 11th and the Sunday shows on the 16th, the nation held a solemn memorial service when the remains of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and the three individuals who died trying to protect him and the others in the compound were returned to Joint Base Andrews on September 14. At the service, Hillary spoke to each of the four families. Members of three families (excluding that of the ambassador) report that Hillary told them “We will make sure the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”
She said this or something like it three times, once to each family. Four different individuals have recalled these conversations.[3] One of these individuals, a retired lawyer and administrative law judge, made a note of the Secretary’s comments in the memo book that (he tells us) he carries with him at all times. The note is dated September 15.
She now denies making these comments. The family members stand by their statements.
Dear reader and friend, could you do what Hillary is accused of doing? Could you look a grieving family in the eye and lie to them about the cause of their loved one’s death?
You could not. It would not occur to you to do it.
Would you join an organization whose leadership behaved that way? Would you want a person who had done something like that – someone who has done things like this repeatedly over the course of her public life — running your neighborhood community club, your PTA, or your kids’ soccer league?
We are none of us saints. Any leader of any organization will be imperfect and will have said things or done things that he or she would wish to unsay or undo. But even after we acknowledge that none of us is fit to cast stones, is it unreasonable to expect a modicum of integrity or decency in a political leader?
The Stupid Party and the Evil Party have really outdone themselves this time.
It is barely conceivable that one or both of these specimens will fail to win their party’s nomination. On the Republican side, several commentators from the #NeverTrump school have made the point that delegates are not legally bound to vote for a particular candidate. More precisely, the position is that state laws purporting to bind delegates to a national convention are unconstitutional. One hears reports that some delegates are persuaded and are actively attempting to derail the Trump nomination. My record as a predictor of political events is spotty – worse than that if you have to know the truth – so I hesitate to offer a prediction. I don’t expect the Stupid Party delegates to the Republican convention later this month to revolt in sufficient numbers to change the outcome.
On the Democratic side, the reaction to the meeting between former president Clinton and Attorney General Lynch may have decreased the attorney general’s room for maneuver should the FBI recommend criminal charges against the former Secretary of State. Some reports state that she has agreed to “rubber stamp” the recommendation of the FBI and DOJ professional staff. Others state that that she “fully expects” to accept the recommendation of the investigative team after it has been reviewed by senior staff. The indications are that the recommendation, whatever it turns out to be, will not arrive prior to the Democratic convention. So, the overwhelming likelihood is that Mrs. Clinton will be her party’s nominee at the convention, even if later events are in doubt.
I accept that there is a chance, perhaps 5%, that one of these two will not be the next president. If that longshot does not come in, then on January 20, 2017, one of the finest exemplars that the Stupid Party or the Evil Party could conjure will take the oath of office.
If that is to be the outcome, let us resign ourselves to it with as much grace as we can muster. There will be another election in 2020. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, a socialist, conservative, or libertarian, pro-choice or pro-life, there is no reason to hand the Stupid Party to someone this stupid or the Evil Party to someone who presents this level of evil. Let’s all resolve to provide a better person to bear our standard, whatever it may be, at our next opportunity. The four years will go by before you know it.
[1] The question is not free from doubt. See “Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue” at http://cis.org/ImmigrantCrime. The authors are serious scholars and are not axe-grinders, which is not true of many researchers in this area. Their tables 5, 6, and 7 provide a reasonable basis to believe that illegal immigrants are over-represented in prison populations and among those who have committed felonies. It should also be emphasized that there is reason to believe that legal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the native population.
[2] I am thinking of Monica Crowley, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, and Conrad Black. Larry Kudlow joined this group late and Steven Moore appears to be signing up.
[3] Some family members report no recollection that she made such a statement.
The Passing Scene 
Well-written, as always, Gerry, and how I loved the Boy Scout story!
You are a superb crafter of arguments, but I must object to the essential one presented here. You suggest we somehow equate what you call Mr. Trump’s Stupid — a pattern of reckless, even incoherent statements made by a man who has never held public office — with some inconsistent statements — which you call examples of Evil with a huge (or should I say yuuge?) E — Mrs. Clinton made during a recent chapter of her lifetime of service to our country.
You report that some members of the Benghazi victims’ families said Mrs. Clinton comforted them three days afterward with what later turned out to be a wrong (although at all not outlandish) explanation of the cause of the tragedy. (To your credit, you also note that some family members said she didn’t make such a statement, although this caveat is not contained in the body of your text.) Branding Mrs. Clinton’s action as “evil” frees you to minimize Mr. Trump’s egregiously inflammatory speech as a practical accommodation, however repellent it may be, to an American electorate with the attention span of a gnat.
Mr. Trump’s public statements are rife not only with shorthand, dog-whistle racist and misogynistic rants, but also with bald-faced self-contradictions, some made within the same speech. To your single example of Mrs. Clinton’s “evil lie”, I offer up one of Mr. Trump’s legion of well-documented doozies, uttered before millions. This particular one occurred on March 15, 2016, when he told George Stephanopoulos in a phone interview that yes, he had seen a blistering ad portraying him as anti-woman. Two minutes later in a phone interview with Matt Lauer, he categorically denied having seen the ad. [1] One of these statements is obviously not true, making him either a liar or an Alzheimer’s patient — although I guess it’s possible he is both. When pressed about a growing avalanche of contradictory statements, he simply denies he ever said the thing he very clearly did say before God and country. (By the way, I have no issue with a politician whose beliefs change over time. Mr. Trump used to be pro-choice and now he’s not, and that’s his right. He has a constituency to represent, and he’s reading the tea leaves correctly. That’s politics. But political expediency is not what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about is a person who feels he is somehow above the most ordinary humdrum expectations about telling the truth.)
Contrast this with Benghazi. In the early going of a fraught and chaotic week, Secretary Clinton described the embassy tragedy as a planned Al Quaeda-style attack. Later in the week Mrs. Clinton repeated the administration’s official position that the attack was a spontaneous event incited by an inflammatory video. I guess it *might* have been possible in that short period of time to determine with absolute certainty what led to the tragedy, but I suggest we might cut Mrs. Clinton some small amount of slack. (We’re still working on who killed the president 53 years ago, after all.) Mr. Gowdy has spent $7 million over two years to prove Mrs. Clinton did something illegal and he did not succeed. In my view what she did does not rise to the level of evil. I know you would agree that Hitler was evil, as were the 2001 hijackers and Stalin and Ted Bundy. What definition of evil would place Hillary Clinton’s actions — as public servant or private citizen — with theirs? For the record, I don’t think Mr. Trump’s behavior is evil, either. But it might be worth the little thought experiment of imagining a Benghazi attack under a Secretary of State Trump. I know, right?
Unlike many who disparage Mrs. Clinton, I *have* allowed myself to “wander through her more than 40 years of public conduct,” and find there an admirable record of service to our country and enlightened positions on issues I care about: improving children’s health, maintaining reproductive rights for women, making health care more affordable for all, ensuring equal pay for equal work, protecting LGBQT rights, promoting early childhood education, recognizing the reality climate change and the need to prevent it, and working to strengthen gun control, to name a few.
This is a why in November, I will proudly cast my vote for the first female president of the United States of America.
I feel bound to respond to your blogpost today because you have obviously put a lot of thought and passion into your comments, but I must protest the false equivalence of Mr. Trump’s Stupid (in short form or long form) and Hillary Clinton’s distinguished record of public service, vilification of which is largely fed by the same small brace of those you call “intelligent, articulate, public intellectuals” — a group that is probably not growing in light of Mr. Trump’s latest cringeworthy floundering. (It won’t surprise you that I would emphasize quite different attributes of Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham: cruel, sarcastic, and without basic empathy or compassion.)
I assume we will probably not ever agree on this one, Gerry, but I thank you most sincerely for the chance to respond! Yay, free speech!
[1]
‘Today’ shows Donald Trump contradiction
Dear Ms. Lane,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Here are a few thoughts in reply.
On the specifics of the Benghazi memorial service on September 14, 2012, if the facts are as you suggest – the Secretary of State tried to comfort the families, basing her comments on the best information available at that time – then there would have been no need to deny that she made the remarks that the families say she made. In fact, your solution is more elegant than hers and she may have regretted not taking that tack. Possibly, from her point of view, the route you suggest was dangerous because she knew about the emails she had sent earlier that week. There was always the chance that they would come to light. As against that, stout denial has not let her down yet.
I accept the point that I focused on only one incident. In my opinion, it is one example that illuminates a long career. There are a host of others. Working from memory, I can list (using shorthand for identification purposes): (1) charges that she hid files while working on the House committee preparing the Nixon impeachment; (2) the famous cattle futures matter; (3) Whitewater; (4) missing Rose law firm billing records (found by a cleaning woman in the First Lady’s sitting room); (5) firing White House travel staff on questionable charges; (6) alleged violations of government consultant regulations; (7) orchestrating cover-ups of her husband’s sexual affairs; (8) as a U.S. Senator, she had a record of opposing sales of nuclear technology and resources to foreign governments, but did not oppose one notable transaction where the buyer/investor – tied to the Russian government – had made significant contributions to the Clinton Foundation and had paid Bill Clinton extravagantly for speeches; (9) using a private server for virtually all email communications as secretary of state; (10) refusing to cooperate with the state department inspector general; (11) alleged use of office to facilitate activities of foreign donors to Clinton Foundation; (12) speaking for large fees to businesses highly regulated by government; (13) the Benghazi incident. Apologies to any scandals that I may have inadvertently overlooked. You are just as important as the others.
Her supporters will say that nothing has been proven, no charges have ever been brought. That is true. No one can argue it. Still, that record is as consistent with profound corruption and lack of respect for rule of law as it is with the bad luck to be the innocent target of a vast conspiracy.
You refer to Mrs. Clinton’s long record of public service. During most of her career, she was in the public eye because she was the wife of an elected official. Two years as the wife of Arkansas’s attorney general were followed by two years as the state’s first lady. That was 1977-1981. Bill lost re-election as governor in 1980. He won the office back in 1982 and stayed in office until he won the presidency in 1992. So, from 1977 to January 2001 (minus that two-year break), Hillary was in public life because she was a political wife, mostly first lady of a state and then of the nation. I don’t think it’s reasonable to count that as “public service”. Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, or Michele Obama are not public servants.
Surely “public service” means something like “holding an elected or executive government job”. She served eight years as a U.S. senator and four years as secretary of state. I don’t recall any significant legislative achievements during her senate career. When her term as secretary of state ended, my recollection is that the highest praise her supporters could sing was that she had traveled more miles than any secretary of state in history.
I think you are counting her work in issue advocacy as part of her public service. There must be thousands of people engaged in issue advocacy in the United States. It’s important work because, in a self-governing republic, politics at its best is a battle of ideas. But it’s not public service.
Turning to your reference to Hitler – and please let’s agree from this point on, no Hitler analogies – we can all agree that whatever may be done in U.S. politics, we do not face evil on that scale. So, if that is the standard of evil, we should retire the word. But the point cuts two ways. If we are taking Hitler and Stalin as our standards for evil, the differences between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump are trivial.
Let me turn to the Trey Gowdy Benghazi committee. You mention in passing that he wasted $7 million in conducting his hearings. Once again, there is no smoking gun! If we could arrange things so that each member of Congress and each senator could waste $7 million a year, but no more, we would be well ahead of the game.
But seriously, the Gowdy committee’s operation illustrates the Stupid vs. Evil interaction that happens over and over in Washington, DC. Like many congress members, Mr. Gowdy is a former prosecutor. His Wikipedia article says that he handled seven death penalty cases, so it appears that he has a lot of experience with high profile investigations. Like other members of his party (call it Republican or Stupid as you will), he wildly overestimated his abilities when investigating Mrs. Clinton.
My personal gold standard for this kind of investigation is a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing back during the George W. Bush administration. W had named federal district court judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit in 2001. The Democrats opposed him because of his position on abortion, but preferred to fight on other grounds. Pickering had presided over a criminal case in Mississippi in which three young men had burned a cross in front of the home of an interracial couple. Two of the defendants pled guilty and received relatively light sentences. The third pleaded not guilty, was convicted at trial, and received a sentence of some seven and a half years.
Pickering became convinced that this third cross-burner was less culpable than the other two and believed that his sentence was unreasonably harsh. Eventually, the Clinton Justice Department agreed, but in the meantime, Pickering had engaged in some unjudicial lobbying with prosecutors.
The Democrats’ theme at the hearing was that Pickering was tolerant of cross-burning, didn’t see it as a particularly objectionable activity. Senator John Edwards (the 2004 vice-presidential nominee) led the questioning. Recall that he built his career in medical malpractice cases where a physician was accused of negligence in delivering a baby and had left a child disabled for life. He is highly experienced, highly skilled in preparing a line of questioning designed to paint his subject as a monster. He proceeded to put Judge Pickering through the wringer, but without bombast, without drama. Each question was asked sotto voce and contained a subtle accusation. The witness’s efforts to explain a complicated situation sounded more and more like evasions as the questioning continued.
It was a masterful performance, the best I have ever seen. I have never seen a member of the Stupid Party attempt to replicate it in any of the many hearings they have conducted when they have been in the majority. There is too much bombast, too many long-winded questions aimed at the six o’clock news, not enough allowance for what they are up against.
I appreciate that your passionate support for Mrs. Clinton is based on your belief that she will implement policies of which you approve. That is no small thing. That is one reason that Donald Trump has had so much success. Republican voters cannot count on the politicians they elect to do the same. Some of those voters have shopped around until they found someone who they believe will actually engage in opposition. They have bought a bill of goods, in my opinion. He’s good at selling.
I will confess that I derive a hidden benefit from your support for Mrs. Clinton. Even an unskilled political predictor such as I am can safely predict that Hillary Clinton will carry Washington State. The last time this state voted R was 1984, when Ronald Reagan carried 49 states. That means I don’t have to agonize. I cannot abide either candidate. I am not going to contemplate which is the lesser of two evils. I turn the decision over to my friends and neighbors and I await the opportunity to contemplate a better choice four years down the road.
Happy Independence Day to all!
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