Some twenty years ago America was asked whether the kind of foul language that Donald Trump has used and the revolting behavior that he is accused of are acceptable in a public official.  The answer was: Yes.  It’s OK.  Bill Clinton was forgiven for the same or worse.  Instead, the Congress that impeached him was punished.  A two-term president usually suffers serious losses in both houses of Congress in his second off-year election.  Reagan lost the Senate in 1986.  George W. Bush lost both houses in 2006.  In 2014, Barack Obama lost 13 seats in the House (already in Republican hands) and saw the Senate switch to Republican control.  Yet, in 1998, the Democrats gained four seats in the House and lost no net Senate seats in the wake of the impeachment of President (Bill) Clinton.

The nation was persuaded that the sexual misbehavior of which Bill Clinton was credibly accused was separate and distinct from his ability to perform the functions of his high office.  Even the charge of rape, sufficiently credible to persuade NBC to hold the story until after the impeachment trial had ended, has never produced more than a yawn from the public.  How is it that the people who gave Bill Clinton a pass reach for the smelling salts when the less appealing Mr. Trump turns up covered with the same pitch?

I don’t see the adolescent conversation as particularly disqualifying for Donald Trump.  I agree that the alleged sexual harrassment would be disqualifying if the accusations proved to be true.  For the same reason, I think Bill Clinton should have been removed from office for his goings on in the White House.  In the case of Mr. Trump, he was already unqualified to serve as president, so the alleged behavior would make him even more fully disqualified than many sensible people thought he was in the first place.  But let’s remember that there is a whole boat load of public officials with similar resumes, some of whom served without any complaints from their constituents.  Teddy Kennedy died in office.  Larry Craig chose not to run for re-election but served out his term.  The list of reprobates is much longer, needless to say.

In my humble opinion, someone who cannot govern himself or herself has no business governing others.  Why on earth would you for a moment allow policy on taxation, or trade, national defense, public health, or anything else of importance to be decided by someone who governs his conduct by soliciting sex in a public bathroom (to mention a Republican senator) or receiving oral sex in the work place (to mention a Democratic president)?

Rational people would not turn over political power to such individuals.  I would put each one of them out of office if I could.

But that’s just me.  The American public came to a different conclusion.  Bill Clinton left office with a very high approval rating.  He lost some ground when the public judged that he sold pardons at the end of his time in office.  He founded the various Clinton charities to rebuild his reputation and at this point his financial and sexual transgressions in office seem to have been forgotten even as later ones of both varieties have been overlooked.

And let’s remember that the inability to govern oneself can be displayed in ways other than sexual misconduct.  Financial corruption, lying, contempt for legal standards and requirements, these too are symptoms of an un-self-governed personality, one that is unfit to govern others.  Polling at time of writing suggests that a plurality at least of the American voting public is not moved by such considerations.

The Trump incidents point out the staggering incompetence of his primary opponents.  The taped conversations that NBC released after a decade in the vault were between Trump and a fellow named Billy Bush.  We understand that he is a cousin of Jeb, or rather Jeb!  The two of them could have worked together to bring the tapes to our attention back when Jeb was still a candidate.  But perhaps Billy could see ahead to the trouble he would be in if the taped conversations were made public.  Also, Jeb! might have felt that gentlemen of his age, class, and station in life do not engage in gutter politics.

But such a constraint was not binding on Marco Rubio or Chris Christie or Scott Walker, to name but three of the mighty 16 that Trump ultimately defeated.  I understand that Trump was a frequent guest on Howard Stern’s program in the 1990s and 2000s, where he engaged in the kind of adolescent summer camp monologues that we have become so familiar with in recent weeks.  The material to do him in was readily available.  You didn’t need a cousin at NBC to manage the job.

Was there no one among the 16 non-Trump Republican candidates prepared to do whatever it took to be rid of him?  We now know that it would have been easy to do, once this material was exposed.  When Henry II became exasperated at the insubordination of Thomas à Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, he said (or is supposed to have said) “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”  He said it in the presence of four of his loyal followers and days later Becket was dead, stabbed in his own cathedral, his blood flowing over the cold stone floor.

Could Christie, who some say can close great bridges through a wink to a subordinate, not find a way?  Marco Rubio’s forebears defied a Communist dictator and found a new home in a free country.  Surely the hot blood that fueled their determination is not completely diluted in his veins.  Scott Walker stood up to an organized takeover of his state capitol by angry demonstrators.  And yet not one of those three or any of the other competitors could turn to a trusted aide and say, “I want him out of the race.  Find a way.  Don’t tell me how you did it.”

Now, if one of them had taken Mr. Trump out of the race, it would not have been clear sailing for the eventual winner of the nomination.  Remember that Mitt Romney, who appears to have led a blameless life, was accused of having been part of a group in high school that might very well have forcibly cut the hair of a student who might possibly have been gay.  And of course, this kind of anti-gay bias is something that stays with a person forever.  Romney was also held responsible for the death of a former employee’s wife some years after the employee separated from service at a company that Romney’s firm acquired.  And Harry Reid charged Mitt with failure to pay federal taxes for a decade.  Reid made his accusation on the floor of the Senate, where he is immune from charges of libel and slander.

Bridgegate would have made Christie an easy target as the nominee.  Scott Walker could have been portrayed as a crazed anti-union fanatic, in the pocket of the Koch brothers.  In his autobiography, Marco Rubio fuddled the dates of his family’s move from Cuba, so that would have made him a target.  Incidentally, that kind of inaccuracy cannot be compared to Secretary Clinton’s reports of gunfire in Sarajevo or Senator Clinton’s eyewitness account of events on September 11, 2001 that didn’t actually take place – those are “brain freezes” and a cause for a warm chuckle among friends.  Who knows what corrupt deals Marco may have done as Speaker of the Florida state house of representatives?  And as a protégé of Jeb Bush, Rubio could have been charged with any number of Jeb’s missteps when he was Florida’s governor.

So, if someone had taken out Donald Trump in the primaries, the eventual Republican nominee would have run into some rough treatment.  It wouldn’t have been clear sailing.  But at least the Republican party would have avoided the embarrassment of losing to the Clintons over a sex scandal.

Edited 10/22/16 to correct a typo.