Many of the same people who defended the independent counsel investigating President Bill Clinton now excoriate the special counsel investigating President Trump for no better reason than the fact that Clinton is a Democrat and Trump a Republican. And vice versa. This kind of tribalism is all too common in politics. That is why it’s important for those of us in the opinion-slinging business to do an occasional self-audit and ask whether we are taking positions based on merit or on political convenience.
That is an especially difficult question when politics is dominated by a figure as polarizing as Trump. The hypocrisy of his supporters is legion — fiscal conservatives have embraced record deficits, moral conservatives have embraced payoffs to a porn star, free-traders have embraced tariffs, champions of law and order have embraced a scorched-earth campaign against the FBI, etc. But just because Trump supporters are being hypocritical doesn’t mean Trump opponents can’t be guilty of the same vice. I have recently been accused of flip-flopping on the Iran nuclear deal and torture because of my hatred for Trump. “Double standards thy name is Max Boot,” wrote one Twitter troll.
Before I get to the specifics of those charges, I want to acknowledge that it is not easy to remain objective about a president I dislike. Indeed, I cannot fathom how anyone with a shred of decency can fail to dislike a president who is a pathological liar, braggart, bully, sexist, racist and nativist — a president who calls the free press “the enemy of the American people,” but praises the world’s most vicious dictators in the most fulsome terms.
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