No one could accuse me of being a compulsive or even habitual apologist for Hillary Clinton, but neither she nor Donald Trump has forfeited the right to the presumption of legality, especially where nothing relevant has been adjudicated. And here I must take issue with Mr. McGurn in another regard. The United States is a prosecutocracy with vastly higher per capita incarceration rates than other large, prosperous democracies (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom). American prosecutors win 99 percent of their cases, 97 percent without a trial, such is the hideous deformation of the plea-bargain system. The assertion of non-criminality on behalf of the Clintons or others, unless successfully challenged, in the vast kangaroo court of the United States, is not such a minimalist yardstick of eligibility for high public office as Mr. McGurn implies.
Watergate started America down the slope of criminalization of policy differences, and Iran-Contra and the Clinton peccadillos accelerated it. It was all nonsense (and so was the original presidential impeachment, of Andrew Johnson in 1868). Since Watergate, the quality of candidates for national office has generally declined and the wells of media opinion have been partially poisoned. I can understand the campaign fatigue of thoughtful commentators, especially when contemplating an election between likely nominees they don’t like on either side. But let us remember that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, whatever their frailties, are both trying to keep the governance of the country between the 30-yard lines, and out of the hands of Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders. The elevation of either Cruz (despite his undoubted intelligence) or Sanders really would give most sane Americans, including, I suspect, Bret Stephens and William McGurn, a severe case of the heebie-jeebies.
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