Reporter's Notebook

A reader in the Midwest makes a related point:

I have followed with great interest the chronicling of the Trump campaign for the historical record. My question to you is this: Is there any integrity left in the Republican party?

I have waited for months for one prominent Republican with real “skin in the game” to step up and say something and take a stand. Something along this line: “You know that I am a Republican, but I am an American first. And as an American, I cannot and will not support the nominee of our party. He is not qualified to be President of this country. If this costs me my position, so be it. Some things are more important!”

Is it too much to ask for just one person to have the balls to do this? And if it is too much, what does this say about our country?

***

A reader who has worked in Republican politics defends John McCain, who has condemned Trump’s statements but so far not Trump himself:

My own opinion is doing anything you can to defeat Trump and hold his enablers accountable is one’s a moral imperative as an American, an acid test of one’s character.  

That said you know that life is a balancing act and McCain is trying to win a GOP primary is a state with a hard-right GOP electorate. Have to give him a little latitude.  Also suspect that’s why he included this line, “...which I will have to answer at the Final Judgment...”— he knows it’s an acid test he's failing and will have to answer for, and it’s weighing on him.  

This reader goes on to say that the Republicans who should be judged most harshly are those who are not up for re-election themselves this year (unlike McCain) but are still riding the Trump Train.

***

From a lawyer on the West Coast:

I thought your term “Vichy Republican” was quite apt. I say this because I was recently watching the Ophuls documentary about France under the Nazi Occupation The Sorrow and the Pity. It does a masterful job of drawing out people on why they decided to resist or collaborate.

One thing that strikes me how many conservatives in 1940 France felt that “well, better Hitler than Blum.” Leon Blum being France’s first Jewish prime minister, who served at the head of a left-wing government in the period 1936-1938.  It just sounds a lot like the praise many conservatives of like Trump and Farange have for Putin and disdain for Obama …

***

A brief note on a potential silver lining:

Wouldn’t it be great if the Khans, Muslim-Americans, became the moral conscience of the nation during this election, with their dignity and eloquence and compassion?

***

And, finally for now, a much longer and more downbeat assessment:

It is becoming blatantly clear to me that the GOP is failing in one of its principal roles as a major political party: To filter out those elements which, at their root, would destroy those organic mechanisms which keep our democracy functioning.

Given how blatant and ever-increasingly obvious is the nature of Trump, why is it so hard for the country to realize what he represents?  Why did not our national immune system immediately recognize him for who/what he is and spit him out? The answer is that Ryan and McConnell and the Vichy Republicans, are validating Trump’s legitimacy, and have reneged on their fundamental duty leading a major political party.

And the GOP’s decay in performing this duty has been advancing for the last 20 years. In today’s NY Times, Lindsay Graham was quoted as saying in reference to Trump’s comments about the Khans,

“This is going to a place where we’ve never gone before, to push back against the families of the fallen. There used to be some things that were sacred in American politics — that you don’t do — like criticizing the parents of a fallen soldier, even if they criticize you,” Graham said.

At last! A Republican willing to say “YOU JUST CAN'T SAY SUCH THINGS!!”  And here's the thing:  It might have started sooner, perhaps Nixon, perhaps Goldwater; but in my mind it started with Newt Gingrich and the ‘94 Republicans who took power and dismantled the structural protections in Congress which fostered comity and collegiality among adversaries. Since that time, establishment Republicans started saying and doing things that political norms dictated that YOU JUST DON’T DO!  

Before that time, no matter how awful the opponent’s policies, the opponent was, nevertheless, a worthy adversary, chosen by worthy citizens who, despite your fervent disagreement with them, were your countrymen.  And starting in ‘94, establishment Republicans started disrespecting the elected representatives of the opposing party. And at that point, they moved from governing to open warfare. And each new incremental move into previously forbidden territory brought new standards of indecency and disrespect; to the point where the honor and patriotism of a proven, decorated war hero (John Kerry), the citizenship and faith of an elected president (Obama), the honor and patriotism of a former POW (McCain), and the fundamental integrity and worth of Congressional institutions (filibuster etc.), were all barriers which it is now acceptable to disregard. Things you just didn’t do, they did.

In a quick Google session I was unable to determine who first said it, but I’ve heard it attributed to Jung, that civilization is a thin veneer. We take for granted that the glue holding this democracy together is only as strong as the willingness of the participants to honor the glue. It’s remarkable how few people it would take to disregard the white lane markings of our highways and turn traffic into a snarl. We function because of our consensus that there are just some things that YOU DO NOT SAY, and there are just some things that YOU DO NOT DO. And since 1994, at least, the GOP, with very little assistance from the Democrats, has been saying and doing non-normative things; and this has empowered a large number of people to say and do non-normative things as a result.

The country depends on its political parties to scrub out the infectious elements; to make sure that, whatever candidates are put forward, at the root they will put the institutions and the norms that provide the glue for our democracy ahead of their ideological and power questing goals. I wonder how graciously GW Bush/Cheney would have responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2000 had it gone the other way. And in the subsequent Congress, I wonder how graciously the Republicans would have allowed a President Gore to function had the result gone the other way. I wonder how normative the Republican response would have been had 9/11 happened on the watch of a Democratic president. Oh. Wait. BENGHAZI!!!!!

The GOP no longer puts the country, its institutions and its norms, ahead of party. And McConnell and Ryan and the Vichy Republicans are glaring truth of the long road down which they've come. Thank you, and Mr. and Mrs. Khan, for directly calling them out. We need the GOP.  We need a functioning, filtering, democracy glue-enhancing GOP. We haven’t had one since it started decaying during the first Clinton administration.

And what will happen when, the next time they nominate a candidate, they manage to hide the things that makes Trump so obvious? THAT’s what scares me most ...

***

Note from a reader on the which-crash-was-it mystery:

The Trump interview was conducted on August 2, according to the editor's note, and the Dubai crash was early in the morning of August 3 EST.

I think the crash was probably the Flagstaff one August 2 involving a Piper Seneca -- which perhaps makes his engineering criticism more defensible than if it was a 777, but frankly makes his distraction even more extraordinary.

One person died in that crash, sadly, but it wasn't a huge news event like the Dubai incident.

And from another reader:

If he gets elected (shudder), I'm sure we'll see Divine Leader Kim Il Trump visiting Renton or Everett to "give guidance" to Boeing workers.

And from another staffer at Boeing:

Word is he’ll be visiting WA to raise money at the end of the month. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to ask him for advice on ways to use topology optimization to improve the design of 3D printed structures.

Judy Myers explains why she is growing uncomfortable with the Time Capsule approach:

I share your fear of what is happening in our society that would allow Trump to become the elected candidate of a major party. I hope the Time Capsule accomplishes your intended goal.

As you may have expected, there is a “but.” It is your tone of amazement that these things are happening, and what I see as your over-reach in describing some of them as horrifying in their uniqueness.

Take your Capsule number 69. Why did Mr. Rucker conduct his interview with a television facing the interviewee? Why did you not list the Trump interview with Bob Woodward, which I think was the best Trump has done?  (It seemed to me that Woodward was trying to have a discussion with Trump, not sandbag him.)

I accept that your intent is to document the Trump campaign, but it would be just as easy to do to Hillary Clinton what you are doing to Trump. Mrs. Clinton has important weaknesses, and it would be just as easy to characterize her in the way that you characterize Mr. Trump. To take just one example, she is having just as impossible a time explaining her email problem as he is having in addressing what we see as his defects.

I live surrounded by Trump supporters. Many are giving up on Democratic leadership as being ineffective in supporting regular people trying to live a regular life. Some of these people see President Obama’s election as a cataclysmic event that destroyed their belief that other Americans shared their view. (Many others have written about this, so I won’t.)

I suggest that it is not just Trump; that you are claiming objectivity but your bias is showing. I suggest that Bush 43 was seriously unprepared for the presidency. I suggest that his attention span and depth of knowledge and understanding of presidential issues was not that different from Trump. I suggest that Clinton is just as resistant to outside information as Trump, and in fact most people who reach such heights of power are similarly resistant. I suggest that Trump has raised important issues to the point that we are talking about them—letting business and power take so much is hurting workers. Comparing him to Clinton, his opposition to the TPP as it was constructed when it became a campaign issue, I want to oppose parts of it too. Yes, he is a self-involved blowhard. No, I don’t want his hand of the nation’s tiller.

In closing, I ask you to read this, “The Media’s Foolish Moralizing About Donald Trump,” by Damon Linker.

Whatever else is happening, we as a country have an opportunity for conversation now that some of our rifts are being openly discussed. Let's not blow it. To that end, I would like to see your writeup of what you heard in Texas and Kansas. I am down closer to the coast and to Mexico and the area you visited is very different from where I am. I am looking forward to your report on what you saw.

I appreciate Ms. Myers’s careful attention, and her taking the time to write in. Here is where and how I see the world differently from her:

• It might be worth emphasizing again the journalistic idea behind starting this Time Capsule series. Donald Trump’s rise is clearly an unusual moment in our public history. No one like him has gotten this close to the presidency in modern times—by which I mean, no one with his total lack of elective or public-office experience, no one as willing to dismiss norms of what nominees “can” and “cannot” say. My purpose, as set out from the start, is to lay down a real time record of what it was like as the country decided whether to make him its leader—and in particular, the ways in which he did depart from norms.
                                                                                 
• As I’ve explicitly said, I’m not imagining that I’m going to change a single voter’s mind. I personally think that Trump’s candidacy has been bad for our civic fiber—“the judge is a Mexican!”—and that a Trump presidency would be worse. But it’s a free country; people can choose as they want. I’m trying to document we know while making that choice.
                                                                                                 
• On a detailed point, I haven’t asked Philip Rucker, but I’ll bet you anything it was not his choice to have Trump looking back and forth at the TV while Rucker was trying to interview him. (One reason I say so: common sense. Another reason: in the transcript, Rucker keeps trying to draw Trump away from what Trump has glimpsed on TV.) And the reason why than transcript seemed significant is that, like the great majority of other long interviews by Trump, it was notable for its lack of sentence-by-sentence sustained argument or thought. It was also significant, as I mentioned, because it displayed Trump’s hair-trigger reaction to a plane crash he had seen, with an immediate, confident explanation that was probably wrong. This would be a very dangerous trait in an actual president.
                                                                                                 
• We move now to the realm of the subjective: I have spent a depressingly large share of my life paying close attention to the way public figures talk—when they are being interviewed, when they are extemporizing on the stump, when they’re battling opponents in debates, when they’re delivering formal speeches. There’s an enormous range among them: Bill Clinton would sound mesmerizing in a rally speech, but if you read the transcript, it would just look ordinary. Teddy Kennedy was a magnificent formal orator but could seem tongue-tied or even aphasic in some interviews. Ronald Reagan was amazingly consistent in his tone, discourse, and argumentative structure whether giving a speech or being interviewed. Bob Dole was notably different in his private wise-cracking mode and his stiffer formal presentations.
  
  They’re all individuals, and they’re all different. But in my experience, Trump is different from any of the rest of them. He knows less—about the government, about the world, about anything other than himself.
  
  Rick Perry got in trouble for a botched debate answer, but he could talk very well about his plans for Texas. Similarly for Dan Quayle, but I once interviewed him about American defense policy in the Pacific, and he was very erudite.
  
  I have never met Trump in person. But the transcripts of his interviews seem to belong in one category, and other public figures I’ve known (with their huge variation) in the other. I’m suggesting that he is different from other public figures, because in my judgment he is.
                                                                                                 
• By extension, I also disagree with the idea that you could apply just the same treatment to George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton. I didn’t vote for Bush, and I think his administration was one of the most destructive in our history. The Iraq war; torture and Guantanamo; the conditions leading to the great crash of 2008, these will always be part of his legacy. But I never doubted that he was a serious man, who took the office (that his father had also held) extremely seriously, and who was doing his best (in ways I disagreed with), and who recognized the gravity of the choices he would make. It was Bush who went to national mosque six days after the 9/11 attacks. It is impossible to imagine him responding to the Khan family the way Donald Trump did.
  
  As for Hillary Clinton, she is not a very good campaigner, as the world knows. It was foolish of her to set up her own server to begin with, and no one can understand why she doesn’t just say: This was a huge mistake, I’m sorry, let me answer any question about it for the next six hours, and then we’re done.
  
  But the idea that she is “just as resistant to outside information as Trump, and in fact most people who reach such heights of power are similarly resistant” is, in my judgment, just categorically wrong. The problem of getting honest judgments, bad news and all, once you become powerful is indeed a profound one. Every leader has grappled with it; it’s a theme of the origins of the Vietnam and Iraq wars, of political treatises from Machiavelli onward. But I am absolutely sure that Hillary Clinton would at least theoretically recognize it as a problem. I have seen no signal that Trump is aware of this peril at all.

That’s enough for now. Thanks for reading, and for writing in.

We have all been dismayed by the lack of spine from Ryan, McConnell, et al in standing up against Trump, disavowing him. They have failed that test and history will judge them accordingly.

Let me now posit a new idea going forward: that they stick by him, endure all the criticism, take all the mud thrown their way for the sole purpose of legitimizing Hillary’s win. They can be the ones who come out on election day and say, “we have been behind our candidate through thick and thin, we have supported him throughout, the people have spoken and HRC will be our next President.” They can only make this claim, they can only legitimize her, if they stand by Trump until the end. If they disavow him now, they will be seen as part of the conspiracy of the elites who rigged this election.

Now, of course Trumpkins don’t care about Ryan, McConnell and all the congressional leadership together. It doesn’t matter. There will always be crazies just like there are now who think Obama is a Muslim Kenyan. What matters is that the leadership, the institutions, function and transfer legitimacy to the winner.

President Calderon had no one in AMLO’s party doing that for him. Ryan and McConnell can do their country a great service if they provide that legitimacy. In order to do so, they have to stick with Trump till the end.

***

For a different perspective on the Ryan-McConnell situation, here’s a reader on the East Coast:

We read now all over the Internet expressions such as one you just made, that Republican leaders who do not dissociate themselves from Donald Trump will “forever share” the “stain” of Trumpism. We see such statements not only from you, but from various right-wing commentators, such as Jennifer Rubin and Michael Gerson.

One wonders, however, what’s really meant. “Forever” is a very long time. Suppose it is November 9, 2016 and Trump has lost heavily, the Democrats have taken the Senate, but the Republicans have kept the House—led by the “forever stained” Paul Ryan. What do you and others, and our major institutions, then do?

Do you refuse to be part of any public meeting at which Trump supporters are present?  Do you continue to denounce them “forever” in your columns?  Do you and others call for them to be treated as pariahs, as your language would imply—and if you do, is there any likelihood that this will occur?  

In short, what sanctions do you see being applied, by anyone, to Trump’s enablers and supporters?  And if no effective sanctions are likely, then what does all this denunciatory language really amount to?

Fair questions. Short answer: No shunning or special status or permanent asterisk. But this is one more choice that will be remembered.

Most people remember who voted which way about the Iraq war. Historians remember who stood where during the civil rights movement—and that, for instance, Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas felt he had to balance his “left-wing” criticism of the Vietnam war with right-wing votes against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As President, Dwight Eisenhower finally turned on Joe McCarthy when McCarthy over-reached and began criticizing Ike’s own beloved Army as a den of sedition. (This was the prelude to the famous “have you no sense of decency” showdown between McCarthy and Joseph Welch.) But until then Eisenhower notably looked the other way about McCarthy’s smears. A National Archives essay on “Eisenhower and the Red Menace” describes a memo Eisenhower got from White House staffers at the end of 1953:

Written by two relatively junior staff aides, Stanley Rumbough and Charles Masterton, the memorandum highlighted the costs of appeasing McCarthy and called on the President to take a more openly critical stance on McCarthy. Eisenhower’s failure to challenge or repudiate McCarthy, Rumbough and Masterton wrote, conveyed the impression that he was weak. Taking McCarthy on directly, they argued, might entail some political costs, notably in relations with Congress. But this possible problem would be outweighed by political gains as the public perceived Ike as a “fighter.”

Eisenhower, they noted, held high ground. “He can appeal to the people now as a popular leader who has been attacked. Further, in speaking out against McCarthyism he is on the side of the angels. He can answer McCarthyism in the spirit of fair play and in the very words of the founding fathers, the Bill of Rights, Washington and Lincoln.”

Eisenhower didn’t act that way at the time; that’s one part of a record that is (in my view) generally very admirable. What Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are doing now will be part of their record—although, as Jorge Guajardo suggests, there could be a way they could turn this into a plus.  

***

As I type this, Donald Trump is about to speak in Erie, Pennsylvania. By chance, Deb and I visited there briefly last month and are returning for a more serious stint of reporting next week. One of the things we’ll consider is the comparison between Erie as Trump is describing it and how people there see themselves.

If you grew up without a mature man around—if the men in your life were the emotionally immature type that seems to be increasingly common—and you got your male role models from the media, then yeah, you may think that the measure of a man is how loud he can yell, how much he can make others cower, or how big his junk is.

Those of us who grew up seeing emotionally stable and mature men go about their lives see those types of males for what they are: scared, immature boys who never progressed to true manhood, and are stuck forever in adolescence.

So my diagnosis is exactly the opposite of the author’s; Trump isn’t a “climax of American masculinity, he’s the nadir. He’s the leader of a sub-nation of manchildren for whom “masculinity” is just a set of behaviors to which one clings, with desperation, out of the adolescent’s overwhelming fear of being perceived as weak.

Or as another reader more succinctly puts it, “Trump is a spoiled, petulant, insecure 12-year-old’s idea of ‘manhood.’”

One way to deal with petulant bullies:

To your credit, you’ve acknowledged that you were badly mistaken when you dismissed Trump’s chances of becoming president. [JF note: see this item, from nearly six months ago.]  I remember the blog post you wrote about it. Your reasoning seemed to boil down to the following: “No one fitting this candidate’s profile has ever come close to winning. Therefore he cannot win.” I would have thought that your failed prediction would have left you chastened and at least made you wonder about what else you might be missing about Trump.

Instead, you’ve taken a fairly tone deaf approach in your Trump Time Capsules. Like your latest one about Trump’s “What the Hell Do You Have to Lose?” comments. Illegal immigration has badly hurt the employment prospects and cultural standing of black Americans. I cannot see how any serious person could argue otherwise. Likewise, the victimology that the Democrats have been pushing for more than 50 years has had a deleterious effect on black Americans’ economic and cultural progress.

I’ve seen this firsthand. My parents and the other black West Indians who flooded into New York in the ‘60s and ‘70s came with little more than the clothes on their back. In a fairly short amount of time, however, they had already exceeded the achievements of the native black population. Similar things can be said about the Nigerians who came to the U.S. during those years. Same genetic stock, different mindset, different results.

As for the “total catastrophe” remark that Trump made about the situation black Americans are in, many reasonable people think this is true. And frankly, whether it’s true or not, will blacks make more progress thinking that their situation is horrific and that they really need to improve, or that things are alright and they just need to tweak a few things?  In any case, by continuing to harp on Trump’s blunt and imprecise language, you continue to miss the forest for the trees.  

***

I thank Mr. Douglas for his care in making his case. There is more here than I can try to address right now, including the relations (and sometimes tensions) between Caribbean-origin black immigrants and black families who have been in the U.S. for generations or centuries. But to summarize, I will say:

• I understand the distinction between talking about Trump the man, and talking about “Trumpism” the phenomenon.
                                                                                                            
• I think there’s been a lot of journalistic attention to the phenomenon, and will be more—up until the election, and thereafter.
                                                                                                            
• I have paid attention to the man himself, because I think his traits are significant in two ways. First, his ignorance and temperamental instability put him outside the range for potential presidents, in my view. Second, I sincerely believe that his demagogic skills have themselves been important in whipping up hostilities that otherwise might not have taken their current form.
                                                                                                            
• I say this on the basis of having reported in a lot of “Trump’s America” over the past three years, and having seen reactions very different from those at a Trump rally. That’s what my wife Deb and I saw most recently in western Kansas, as reported here (most people there will vote for Trump, but they are not furious or exclusionist in the way he is) and also in the challenged industrial town of Erie, as we’ll start reporting this week.
                                                                                                            
• Why am I, personally, hostile to Donald Trump as a public figure? Because the things I value most about our country, and the qualities I most respect in public leaders, are the things he has gone out of his way to attack and demean. I believe that the country, despite its acute and obvious problems, is in an improving rather than deteriorating stage of its history—and that its ability to embrace multitudes and thrive from diversity is its fundamental strength. This is not the Trump vision, and not what a vote for him represents.

That’s all for now. Thanks to Jamie Douglas for his note.

Even the reference to immigration (“Illegal immigration has badly hurt the employment prospects and cultural standing of black Americans. I cannot see how any serious person could argue otherwise,” [as the Black Trump Supporter wrote]). I happen to agree that immigration (legal and illegal) has hurt the employment of working-class and unskilled Americans, Blacks included. I believe that the broad studies that focus on wages miss the other reasons that employers select low-skilled laborers (working conditions and deference to authority, for example).

But  Mr. Douglas doesn’t support his argument with facts, only rhetoric. So, while I can accept his assertion regarding employment (because of my own research and educational background in economics), I nearly spit out my coffee when he mentioned “cultural standing.”  

Look, African Americans have a lot of problems in this country and continue to deal with issues of institutionalized racism, individual racism, police brutality, plus all of the other problems shared by the poor. But if someone would like to define “cultural standing” for me and then explain, not only how that standing is low for African Americans but how it is worse since the Civil Rights Era due to unchecked immigration, I am all ears!

Which brings me back to my opening remarks. As I explained to my Spanish friends, you have to understand the depth of Trump’s support in two ways: The first is his exceptional, if unconventional, rhetorical skills and brand management. When I compare him to Berlusconi, they get it immediately.

The second, and this is where I believe Mr. Douglas comes in based solely on what was published in your Note, is that Americans don't “do policy,” by and large, as an electorate. They “do feelings” and “teams.” Sometimes you vote for your team and sometimes you vote against the other team.

Mr. Douglas’s opinions are perfectly valid as opinions. In fact, I suspect we’d agree on more than few things. They are not, however, reasons to support Trump based on anything one could reasonably argue that a Trump presidency would do (see current back-pedaling on Immigration Policy). Rather, they are reasons to support Trump as a sharp stick in the eye of those with whom you’ve disagreed for many years. Maybe you can’t prove them wrong (hell, that would take actual policy work) but you can make them lose. And on November 9th, that will be good enough. On January 20, 2017, however, and for the years after, it won’t nearly be enough.

***

3. The candidate of the future. The preceding note says that the end of the Trump candidacy won’t be the end of Trumpism. Another reader to similar effect:

I was curious to see where Mr. Trump would take [his campaign]. Unfortunately, he seems to be stuck on neutral. That is unfortunate.

But he epitomizes the future. The Celebrity as candidate. What is unresolved is the neglected portion of poor working-class whites who found a channel. The Republican Party neglected them. They will still be there.

I thought he had a chance if he was able to get 30 percent of the black vote. I thought that was achievable. Now it seems remote.

Maybe the status quo remains. For now. But not much longer. The pivot is being made historically from the statesman/politician to business leadership. The building of corporate transnationalism and the inability of the nation-state to adequately manage this change bodes for severe transformation. I am unsure of how it will play out.

However, anger and frustration is building in the heartland. At least from Nashville, Indianapolis and Tennessee. The less affluent are my clientele. I give them access to a piece of the American Dream. I resell big box stuff.

My clients are the New Americans: Africans from different parts; Latinos, of which I am now adapted as a dual citizen of Costa Rica; and from other parts. I sell to the New Native Americans: natives of all types and parts of the country. And all is not well. The economy is well enough at this moment to keep the lid from popping off. Let the next economic downturn happen, and I am unsure of how it will play out.

***

4. Take a stand. Earlier this month I quoted a reader who said that stricter measures were needed to shun or ostracize the Vichy Republicans, the people like Paul Ryan or Pat Toomey who beyond question know what is wrong with Donald Trump but who still officially stand with him. In reply I explained why I thought the most sensible thing someone like me could do is simply to lay out the record, making clear who knows what as the campaign unfolds.

The reader isn’t buying it, and is back for more:

I appreciate your including my message of August 11 (below) in your “Trump Nation” posting of August 12, including your detailed response. [Various other complimentary set-up remarks...]

At the same time, I wonder if you are entirely satisfied with where your response leaves the issue, since it appears to have some limitations.

For one thing, the idea that supporting Trump will be “be part of [the] record” for Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and others seems really inadequate as a means of motivating them to denounce Trump. Were they to do so, they would risk serious and immediate professional and personal consequences; given the nature of Trump’s supporters, even violent attack would be possible. The prospect of some general taint on their record, with unspecified consequences, is a very weak deterrent.

Certainly Eisenhower, in the case you cited, did not sustain any obvious damage for his cowardice in 1953; he was triumphantly re-elected in 1956 and had an honored retirement.  

As well, this concept fails the test of justice. As you and others (such as the Southern Poverty Law Center) have documented, real people are suffering now from Trump’s effects on the country—let alone the potentially world-historical evils that would result from his election.  (McCarthy, whom you mention, did not have the nuclear-launch codes.) Yet your concept leaves those who are supporting him, and who are thus complicit in these evils, with no immediate punishment at all.  

And finally, deferring a reckoning in this way really seems, with respect, to let those who have so forcefully denounced these scoundrels (the word is not too harsh, given the indictment presented) off the hook. If you are right in describing their conduct as despicable, then they should be publicly despised—and that despisal should be ongoing and constantly reinforced. After all, the fact that other and better people might save the country from the worst results of their bad conduct by defeating Trump on November 8 does not reduce their culpability.

And those most involved in making the case against them would seem to have an obligation, if they take their own words seriously, to lead the continuing effort to shame them, especially since these critics have access to public fora with which to do so.  

The mark of dishonor you correctly believe should attach to Ryan, McConnell, and others will not appear on its own, nor will it be applied by God like the fabled mark of Cain. It will take real effort to resist the tendency, on November 9, to “let bygones be bygones.” And those of us who believe, as I do and as you and others seem to imply, that such an attitude would be a real error have to look to you, Michael Gerson, Jennifer Rubin, and others to use your voices to avert it and to continue to hold these people to account. I realize that commentators who take such a position toward figures with major institutional political power risk consequences to themselves; but that would seem to be the price of the stand you and others have so honorably taken.

I hope you will reconsider the approach you outlined on August 12 in favor of a more active position toward those in prominent positions who surely know better, but who are continuing to do nothing to prevent the damage Trump's candidacy is causing, and the far worse damage it threatens in future.

To respond briefly: Yes, I think it contemptible that the likes of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton (along with most incumbent GOP senators); Chris Christie and Mike Pence (along with most incumbent GOP governors); and other people who clearly know better are abetting Trump in this campaign and increasing the chance he might actually win office. In my view, they will always deserve the contempt they are earning with this Vichy-like accommodation—and Republicans and conservatives who have stood against Trump will always deserve respect for their stand (even from those who disagree with them on many other fronts).

But in practical terms, I don’t know what more someone in the press who is opposed to Trump is supposed to do. Does Paul Ryan spend one second worrying about what I think? Does Mitch McConnell spend one nanosecond? Chris Christie might feel bad that his fellow Springsteen fan Jeff Goldberg is calling him one of the “hollow men.” He doesn’t care if I say so.

I made a similar point to this reader, when saying that I would quote his followup. He replied this way:

To be clear:  I’m not suggesting that you should take some kind of public lead in a political sense (for example, in trying to remove Trump’s enablers from office).

Rather, I simply hope that you and others who have been so prominent in making the case against the enablers’ behavior should not drop the issue on November 9, regardless of the outcome of the election. If that’s what you mean by “laying out the case in public,” that may be the most you can do.

Fair enough. As I say, it’s 70-plus days until the election, and then a whole national history beginning the next day.

Many more were just procrastinators.

All this to say Trump reminds me of some of those clients who literally kept a small army of accountants and lawyers busy year round. One of my friends called clients like that “Pig-Pen,” after the Peanuts character that always left a trail of dust behind him.

Guys like Trump are “Masters of the Universe,” and maneuver in and out of bankruptcies, and partnerships, and *deals* in such a fluid manner that dealing with the IRS is like just another banker sitting around the table.

No big deal, just the cost of doing business.

***

In August, a reader sent this note from an online discussion of Roger Stone’s observation that of course Trump should release his taxes:

“As [a] former … IRS agent in large dollar cases I can tell you why Trump is being audited every year and what he doesn’t want you to know.

“It’s this: high net worth individuals with multiple corporations have tax departments that deliberately take positions they know they can't sustain and just wait for the IRS to go out and hopefully find only a fraction of the money they really owe. It’s a low interest loan from the government to which they don't have to submit an application … just submit a return they know is wrong and wait for the IRS to come along and correct it … thus the annual audits. IRS does not audit unless they are going to get big bucks.

“Simple answer, Trump is a taxcheat. That’s what he doesn’t want you to know.”

After quoting the former IRS agent, the reader adds:

As you mentioned, as long as Trump's tax return remains private, the public is free to speculate as to why he would not release them. You mention over and over again that he hasn’t released them but, unless I’ve missed some of your writing, haven’t delved too much into what it really means.

Right, because I have no idea. All we can logically infer is that something in those returns would be worse and more embarrassing for Trump than his refusal to release them has been.

***

Another reader speculates on what the source of embarrassment might be:

You have mentioned many times about Trump’s failure to release a medical report.  This omission is likely very analogous to his refusal to release his tax returns.

The likelihood is that the reason for both is not either criminality (in the case of his taxes) or infirmity (in the case of his medical records).  The likelihood is that both are due to embarrassing private details.

It has often been speculated that his tax returns might show embarrassing details such as much lower than advertised wealth, sleazy financial connections to Russia, or chiseling on charitable donations.

My assumption is that his health-care records reveal a stigmatized health condition.  As he was by all accounts, including his own, quite the swordsman in his day (the ’70s and ’80s) there is a very high likelihood he has at some point contracted herpes or HPV.  That is the only plausible reason why he would be unwilling to release his medical records.  Both conditions are extraordinarily common and total irrelevant to his fitness to be president.  But either would be mortifying for him (as well as just about anyone else) to have the condition revealed publicly.

This may be idle speculation but frankly pales in comparison to Trump and his allies’ repulsive Swiftboating of  Hillary’s health.

***

The next reader, a lawyer, begins with a reference to an essay by Fred Goldberg, former IRS Commissioner, called “Trump has no excuse not to release his tax returns”:

Fred Goldberg’s essay reminds me of an important point about Trump:  Throughout this campaign, he has consistently placed his personal and business interests over his duty to the public as a candidate.

From his refusal to disclose tax returns (because it might possibly impact his ongoing audit) to his billing for the use of his business facilities to his trip to Scotland in the middle of the campaign (a task which he could certainly have delegated to one of his children), it has become clear that, if elected President, there will be constant conflicts of interest that arise and that we should have no confidence that he would opt to advance the public’s interests over his own.

***

A brief note on the value of the returns:

So far there is cloud of unreality investing and obscuring the entire Trump phenomenon . For that reason alone  the tax returns are of added value because they will contain at least a breath of reality. They might be the only real thing we can know about this very peculiar candidate.

***

Finally, a reader refers to something that has been in and out of the news during Trump’s campaign:

With regard to Trump’s taxes, he has received the NY State STAR tax rebate for the past two years. This tax reduction is automatically given to anyone making less than $500,000 in reported income... The STAR rebate has not been revoked as far as I've seen (it is granted electronically). Trump is a billionaire claiming a tax credit meant for middle-class New Yorkers, because of depreciation rules for his real-estate holdings. I'm sure that's a big part of why he doesn't release his tax returns.

There is of course one person who could end all this speculation, and that is none other than the man Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Pat Toomey, and a long list of other luminaries think should become president. He’s also the man at the bottom of the list below, re-upped from yesterday.

• Post-Nixon presidential and vice-presidential major-party nominees who have agreed to release their tax returns before the election: Gerald Ford (summary statement), Bob Dole, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Geraldine Ferraro, Dan Quayle, Mike Dukakis, Lloyd Bensten, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jack Kemp, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, Mike Pence.
                                                                                                                                                      .
• Nominees who have refused: Donald Trump.