A Bipartisan Slippage in Standards - WSJ. Peggy Noonan
Dec. 5, 2024 5:47 pm.1/2
We’re seeing bipartisan slippage of standards.
It is embarrassing as a citizen to see the president of the United States pardon his son, and in such an all-encompassing way, for any legal transgression going back nearly 11 years, which feels like a concession to the assumption that his more interesting law-stretching or -breaking may be yet unknown. The president had promised frequently and explicitly that he wouldn’t pardon his son, that he’d play it straight and let the course of justice play out. Which means he knew it was important to people, to how they viewed him, and so he lied to reassure them. All this did what others have said: lowered trust in political leaders, made the cynical more cynical.
The nature of Hunter Biden’s bad actions is famous in the public mind because it involves videotaped depictions of decadent behavior—guns, drugs and sex, all memorialized by him and stored on his famous laptop. It became an emblem of the assumption that the elites of our nation, the people pulling the strings, are wholly decadent—dope-smoking lowlifes, abusers of others.It’s looking very Late Rome among our leadership class. Anyway, by pardoning his son the president makes himself look part of all that.
The pardon struck me as a bitter action, too. A president who cared about public opinion, or even that of his own party, wouldn’t have done it, or quite this way. It’s the president flipping the bird to an ungrateful (and also rather decadent!) nation that coldly turned on him after a single debate, and then elected that tramp Donald Trump—they deserve what they get. (Noonan hates Trump more than Bidan)
Will the pardon, as some of the president’s friends say, be forgotten tomorrow? No. People still remember Bill Clinton’s late-night pardon of Marc Rich for tax evasion, wire fraud and other charges. People who like Mr. Biden and those who dislike him will always end the telling of his political story with “And then at the end he pardons his son!”
What an act of disrespect.
As to the Politico report that the White House is considering pre-emptive pardons for officials not yet even accused or convicted of breaking the law, wow. If that is true it makes you wonder.What have our leaders been up to the past four years that they require such unprecedented forgiveness? Even with fears of a vengeful Trump Justice Department, pre-emptive pardons are an excessive move.
Now to the incoming administration’s slippage of standards, the exotic cabinet picks that veer from “that’s a stretch” to “that’s insane.” The more exotic nominees=—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health and Human Services, Pete Hegseth at Defense, Kash Patel at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mehmet Oz at Medicare and Medicaid Services—don’t have backgrounds that fit the jobs. Taken together they look like people who want to blow things up.
It is one thing to look at the huge and sprawling federal government and figure out what parts need most urgently to be to be reformed and remade. The Pentagon, for instance, can’t pass an audit; no one is sure of procurement, of exactly what weapons are needed for the future; and on top of that young men don’t want to join anymore, and when they do, many can’t pass the physical and educational requirements. The Defense Department is in an ongoing crisis—as usual. So you could focus there.
But these nominees seem as if they want a demolition derby everywhere. That isn’t a plan for progress but a recipe for unproductive chaos—nonstop, systemwide, all agencies involved.
Mr. Hegseth vowed in these pages to fight on, but his nomination looks at the moment in greatest peril. His nomination by Mr. Trump was careless and could be interpreted as an act of contempt for government itself. But if it is true that the backup choice might be Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—well, that would be brilliant. Mr. DeSantis is a brick wall; he knows how to execute, having been the successful chief executive of a major state; no one would think he doesn’t mean it when he says he opposes woke ways and regulations; and the Pentagon would be more inclined to fear him than roll him.
Also it would make Mr. Trump look generous to a vanquished foe and honestly alive to his talents. That would be refreshing.
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