Each week I tell myself the presidential campaign cannot get more depressing. Each week I am proved wrong.
Last week alone:
• Hillary Clinton’s manifest, blatant untruths about her email server were meticulously detailed by the State Department inspector general.
• Donald Trump continued attacking fellow Republicans and promised he alone would solve California’s drought. (How? Don’t ask.) His campaign is in disarray; he fired his political director; he accepted and then backed out of a debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and he called a federal judge in the Trump U case against him for fraud a “hater.”
• Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., went overboard in his eagerness to help elect Mr. Trump (saying he’d be “honored” to speak on Mr. Trump’s behalf at the convention). On Friday, over a span of several hours, he argued on Twitter with and belittled critics. He hinted about a Senate re-election run and then backed away. A once-promising star of the party seems to have lost his way in the wake of his defeat at Mr. Trump’s hands.
• It looks like it is Mitt Romney or no third candidate (aside from Gary Johnson and maybe Mr. Sanders) to run against the two horrid major-party candidates.
Ms. Clinton reminds us how ethically challenged she is and how lacking is the presence of honest staffers willing to curb her worst instincts. That reminder comes in the very week Mr. Trump emphasizes how dangerously erratic, unfit and unprepared he is. Voters are supposed to find one of these less terrible than the other. The #NeverTrump forces think it is self-evident that Mr. Trump is the more frightening of the two, a menace to the republic. Ms. Clinton makes their argument tougher.
It’s enough to make you despair for the enterprise of self-government, or at least want to hide under the bed until the election is over. We don’t have that luxury, nor do responsible citizens. There were several takeaways in an immensely disturbing week:
First, the press is actually doing its job. The mainstream media and punditocracy almost uniformly came down hard on Ms. Clinton, recognizing the report confirmed she broke federal rules and lied about her conduct. Exacting reporting and damning editorials usually should remind conservatives that Ms. Clinton has lost the built-in media advantage most Democrats enjoy. The press is also giving Mr. Trump greater scrutiny, highlighting blatant falsehoods and examining his organizational ineptitude.
The problem here is that each candidate’s base does not care and is immovable. Presumably there are those still open to persuasion and others who will be so exasperated as to stay away from the polls altogether.
Second, Republicans seem not to understand that to “endorse” means to “declare one’s public approval or support” for someone. Are reluctant Republicans who nevertheless “endorse” Mr. Trump saying they approve of or support Mr. Trump, or are they merely saying (foolishly in my view) that Ms. Clinton is worse? The difference is between telling voters someone very bad (Mr. Trump) is good or telling voters they are choosing Mr. Trump as the better of two choices. The former makes one intellectually dishonest; the latter is a failure of discernment.
You would think by now a few would say: “As an elected official I’m bound to respect my party nominating process, but I cannot offer my personal endorsement. Voters should decide for themselves.”
Third, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. , attempting to reassure voters, said that the president has constraints. “No matter how unusual a personality may be who gets elected to office, there are constraints in this country,” Mr. McConnell assures us. “You don’t get to do anything you want to.” That is small comfort when one realizes the range of damage a president can do (e.g., set off a stock market panic, damage centuries-old alliances, staff top spots with crooks and cronies) and how long and arduous an effort is required to resist or reverse presidents who choose to disregard “constraints.”
President Barack Obama vastly overstepped the bounds of executive authority in his unilateral executive order on delayed deportation, but he is not so contemptuous as to disregard a court order ruling the program unconstitutional. Mr. Trump seems precisely the type to ignore all constraints. One can foresee one constitutional crisis after another.
The only consolation is that the final cards have not yet been played. Ms. Clinton does not quite have the nomination in hand and our warnings about the severity of the FBI investigation look more sound in the wake of the IG’s report. Democrats, if the unimaginable happens to Ms. Clinton — e.g., an indictment, an electoral collapse on June 7 — would have to decide between letting Bernie Sanders capture the nomination or engaging in a civil war to wrest the nomination away from him.
Mr. Romney, a true patriot who has both the moral fiber to comprehend the threat Mr. Trump poses to our democracy and the political skills to run a credible independent campaign, may decide he has no choice but to step into the race. That in and of itself may affect Mr. Sanders’ calculations.
We can only hope that such a decision marks the re-emergence of sobriety, common sense and maturity in our political system.
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post.
First Published: May 31, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
