Thursday, September 29, 2016

What Are the Checks and Balances in the Next Administration?

With the state of constitutional checks on the executive branch uncertain, America is in serious danger with either major-party candidate.
This election year makes a mockery of past complaints about the “lesser of two evils.” That cliché has been trotted out in every election of my lifetime. In every previous contest though, the choice was not between evils. It was often between flawed candidates (think George W. Bush), and bad candidates (e.g. Al Gore or John Kerry).
This year’s decision is different. Hillary Clinton would be a conventional bad candidate (in a substantive, not stylistic sense) were it not for the revelations about the e-mail server. Her deception, her greed, her progressive views are all terrible (if dismayingly familiar), but the indifference to national security she demonstrated in the use of a private server (on which she did, despite denials, transmit classified information), places her on a plane that no national candidate has occupied before. She should be disqualified for commander-in-chief.
Donald Trump too should be debarred. Commentary magazine’s John Podhoretz likened the gradual acceptance of Trump on the right to the human response to putrid odors. “After about the first 45 seconds, disgust abates as the brain accustoms itself.” I cannot think of a more striking example of defining deviancy down.
In order to make their peace with Trump, some apologists argue that the “guardrails” of the American constitutional system are robust enough to withstand even the depredations of an unstable, mendacious, would-be autocrat.
Read the rest of this National Review op-ed HERE.

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