Although he claims to be handing over a more peaceful world, Obama is giving his successor several time-bombs. He will bequeath Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton a Middle East in which American special forces are already on the ground in the midst of civil war and disorder in four states: Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and, soon, Libya. In any one of these theaters, U.S. troops could be attacked or kidnapped, and Donald Trump’s unusually-sensitive sense of honor and desire “to hit back 10 times as hard” would be triggered. Great thing, as Coach Bobby Knight said in his endorsement, that Trump has the “guts” to drop a nuclear bomb.

Why did the #NeverTrump movement fail? For the same reason that the Congress implicitly granted Kathleen Sebelius the right to tell Catholics when to buy birth control, or the same reason they demanded Secretary Clinton talk about her emails and not the CIA’s mission in Benghazi. Congress transfers much of its legislative powers to the Executive, and all of its ability to check that branch to the Supreme Court.

Democrats are just as supine too. Did the Democratic Congress of 2006 use its time to put anyone from the Bush administration in jail for domestic spying, or to really grill the administration on the use of torture and rendition? Do Democrats put pressure on Obama over his expansive use of kill lists and drone warfare? Of course not. So we get the prospect of handing the keys of Gitmo to Trump.