Reinstalling Guardrails To Presidential Abuse Of Power and Corruption...
HHistorian: After Trump, public and press should hold Biden to a high standard
WASHINGTON — Republicans certainly had their complaints about Barack Obama’s presidency.
They argued he was too politically inexperienced, spent too much, wasn’t transparent enough, issued too many executive orders, campaigned too much (including from the White House), disrespected allies and played too much golf.
Then many of them stayed silent as Trump took all of those criticisms to a whole new level — he was more politically inexperienced, spent way more, issued more executive orders, campaigned much more (including holding his convention from the White House and starting his re-election effort after his inauguration), disrespected more allies and played significantly more golf.
“The wake of Watergate, for instance, was a great time for anyone who worried about a president grabbing for too much power and corruption at high levels,” he said. “If anything, our demand for high presidential ethics and transparency should now be louder than ever.”
Beschloss adds that Republicans who criticize Biden for committing transgressions — but who stayed silent when Trump did the same (or, as may likely be the case when it comes to corrosive political rhetoric, far worse) — should, at the very least, have an asterisk next to their criticism.
“Republican leaders may now complain about what President Biden is doing, but we must strictly set those complaints against the backdrop of what they did not complain about when President Trump was in office,” Beschloss said.
Bottom line: If you want guardrails in a democracy — for Democratic and Republican presidents — you can’t set them so low that they fail to work.
And you should reward those who have been consistent about the guardrails for both parties, not those who only want them for one party and not the other.
We now have an opportunity to raise the guard rails and put in place mechanisms tht make it much harder for a rouge authoritarian con manor women to ever pull a repeat of the donald j. trump administration.
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