HHistorian: After Trump, public and press should hold Biden to a high standard

With the incoming Biden administration the nation has an opportunity to reverse the destructive authoritarian tendancies and corrupt practices of the donald j. trump administration. America's reputable mainstream media and the rational and honest public must be the warriors for democracy and the rule of law going forward. Simply put American politicians can no longer be counted on to to the right thing. This includes fiercely defending and protecting our democracy and its institutions. The most pressing question is, is the American public and the media up to the challenge.

Only time will tell and we're hopeful President Elect Biden and his administration will push for, and give full support to, transparency and proper congressional oversight just as our Constitution demands of us. Now, on to a most enlightening article.

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.

And it all raises the question: Where should the public and the political media set the bar for Joe Biden after Trump’s presidency?

NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss argues that the bar should remain high for Biden, especially when it comes to ethics and transparency.

“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.