Pierce: This President* Never Deserves the Benefit of the Doubt
This President* Never Deserves the Benefit of the Doubt
Not in his actions, and not in whom he appoints to his administration* or the judicial bench.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JUL 9, 2018
Over the weekend, there was some slanging and banging on the electric Twitter machine over a very interesting topic: whether or not it is Good Journalism to continue to cover extensively the president*’s gin-up-the-rubes rallies, at which he says the same stuff, over and over again, as though there is any real news value in anything said by this moldy bag of old resentments.
One side argued, with some logic, that, like it or not, the guy is the president* and what he says has inherent news value simply because he says it. The other side argued that he is still Donald Trump, and that, among our presidents, he is uniquely unqualified, uniquely uninformed, uniquely unoriginal, and, most important, uniquely compromised, although to what extent we won’t know until Robert Mueller unleashes the hounds this fall. Therefore, goes this line of thinking, covering this guy as though he were Dwight Eisenhower, or W.H. Taft, or James K. Polk—which is to say, giving him the benefit of the doubts that accrue to his office—is to obscure the unique threat to our institutions that this president* embodies with a cloud of dangerous political banality.
Any action taken by this president* while in office should be considered prima facie as either corrupt or incompetent until proven otherwise. Anybody hired by this administration* should be considered prima facie unqualified for the job given to them. And any judges nominated should be considered prima facie unworthy of having been nominated simply on the basis of the president* who nominated them.
The phrase is, “sui generis.” Get used to it.
I understand that, in practical terms, there are few ways to act on these assumptions. (Although I think it behooves major news organizations to rethink volunteering to get jerked around at the rallies week after week.) The government must be staffed. The courts must function. But we all must be aware that all of that is being done in the most radically different—and radically perilous—political context that the country has seen since the run-up to the Civil War, and we must insist that the institutions of government act on that awareness as best they possibly can. That means that every fight is worthy no matter how futile. Even if all you’re doing is creating a historical record, that’s worth doing. The institutions of government, and the people operating them, have to stand up just to stand up.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22094866/donald-trump-sui-generis/?src=socialflowTW
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