If you perused Twitter, sampled a cross-section of our leading newspapers, or dipped randomly in and out of the ever-rising tower of Babel on cable, talk radio and podcasts in the past few days, you were given a vivid demonstration of the binary principle on which our political discourse now operates. You have the impression that approximately half the people of this country regard the federal indictment of Donald Trump as the greatest affirmation of republican democracy since the surrender at Appomattox, while the other half view it as the greatest abuse of power since George III tried to levy a stamp tax on his colonial subjects.
One lachrymose letter-writer to the New York Times, Dody Osborne Cox of Guilford, Conn., captured the former sentiment perfectly in a missive directed at the prosecutor: “Jack Smith, all I can say is thank you. Thank you for believing in our country. Thank you for trying to uphold our democracy. Thank you for your courage. I have tears in my eyes. You have restored my hope. Grateful. Stay well.”
Any moist eyes on Mr. Trump’s side are tears of hot rage. “It’s disgusting,” Linda Clapper, 75, of Plum Borough, Pa., told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I think they’re after him and going to do anything they can to stop his momentum.”
I suspect I am not alone in doubting whether this is an accurate picture of the distribution of the moral sentiment of Americans as they ponder this latest step down into the national political abyss. I would bet that most decent Americans are sufficiently enlightened and flexible to hold two wholly consistent thoughts in their heads at the same time:
First, that Mr. Smith’s case against Mr. Trump is a devastating charge sheet that, if validated in court, suggests behavior by a former president so recklessly indifferent to U.S. national security, so contemptuous of the law, and so preening and vain as to be—on its own, aside from anything else we may have ever heard or read about this man—disqualifying for any public office, let alone the highest in the land.
Second, that the decision by Joe Biden’s Justice Department to pursue a criminal case against Mr. Biden’s predecessor and likely opponent is a radical and dangerous overreach, a fateful move that can only undermine public faith in the law, and a troubling suggestion of selective justice, following the non-prosecution of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the proliferating evidence of a lack of prosecutorial zeal by this administration over investigations relating to the president’s own family.
This is more than a guess on my part. A solid bloc of Americans are appalled by and tired of being confronted with yet more evidence of Mr. Trump’s dishonesty, moral turpitude and utter shamelessness, and the current president’s chicanery, divisive opportunism and rising unfitness. A new ABC/Ipsos poll finds less than one-third of American voters have a favorable view of each man.
So what? Voters have to make a choice. Choices are always binary. In the end the majority of voters who aren’t fans of either man will have to decide whose flaws are greater. The presidential ballot doesn’t allow for a nuanced moral calculus.
This view holds that the likeliest outcome of this latest legal bombshell will be to polarize further and make it even likelier that the least appealing outcome for most Americans — a rerun of 2020 — is what they will face.
The move will further energize motivated Republicans to get out and vote for Mr. Trump; while the prospect of a rematch will propel enough Democrats to swallow their doubts and send Mr. Biden in for one more tilt.
I find myself doubting this conventional wisdom and for the first time in a while starting to wonder whether the latest developments might bring a reprieve from zero-sum partisan warfare.
The problem is that we know for sure now that a Trump-Biden rematch will never end the national standoff. Whoever wins is now guaranteed a judgment of illegitimacy. If Mr. Trump loses, his supporters can claim — more credibly than in 2020 — that the election was stolen, that his candidacy was hobbled by the endless criminalization of politics. If Mr. Biden loses, chances are, given the law’s delay, that Mr. Trump would be both president-elect and a defendant in a series of criminal cases. Democrats will treat him as ipso facto illegitimate.
On top of this, either man would be constitutionally limited to one more term in the White House, further guaranteeing that 2024 will be nothing more than a massive and dangerous roadblock on the path to any sort of American progress. There is no escape from this outcome — a presidential election that produces a hollow and Pyrrhic victory — unless one or both parties’ voters cut the Gordian knot and free the country from this debilitating and demoralizing political and legal warfare. This latest occasion for partisan anger may, strangely, offer us a chance for its own redemption.
More Coverage
The ‘invisible wall’ amplifying China’s population doom loop
A two-tier system that has long made workers leave children behind in villages is cutting into birthrates with the left behind, now grown, rejecting the idea of having offspring.
Big companies funding Trump’s inauguration
The second Trump inaugural fund is on track to be the most lucrative yet. Find out which companies are flocking to support the billionaire businessman.