WASHINGTON – Democracies sometimes collapse suddenly. More typically, they waste away.
One major cause of institutional decline involves politicians putting their own immediate interests ahead of their obligations to democratic norms. We wake up one day and discover that a long series of individual choices has rotted out the constraints on authoritarian rule.
President Trump plainly feels no sense of stewardship when it comes to our political system or to any accepted standards of truth. It should thus not surprise us that in anticipation of Robert Mueller’s actions this week, Trump rolled out an assault on the legitimacy of the special counsel’s investigation and brazenly insisted that not he but Hillary Clinton (the holder of no public office) should be the subject of prosecutorial interest.
Trump’s Distract-O-Rama ought to be met with derision and condemnation. Note that by securing a guilty plea from former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos for lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russians to secure “dirt” on Clinton in 2016, Mueller confirmed the central premise of his probe. Yes, there was collusion between Russia and the Trump apparatus aimed at defeating Clinton.
We don’t yet know for certain how high up engagement with the Russian project went.