Resign. Resign. Everyone: resign. Resignation has come to mean failure, something one does when cornered, caught dead to rights, incapable of continuing for even another day. It should be an act of honor—a high point in a career of service. It isn’t shameful. It is noble. It is the first and sometimes only step in the expiation of shame, and (ironically) the ultimate sign of one’s fitness for office.

No one demonstrates the value of these traits better than those who lack them entirely. …

I cannot prove this, but I believe the tendency to stick it out rather than resign started roughly when Representative Anthony Weiner (New York again, this time a Democrat) called a press conference to discuss whether he had, in fact, tweeted a picture of his penis, tumescent in his underwear. He could have just quit, and eventually he did (but lived to humiliate himself another day). But that pause to hold a press conference broke the seal on something dangerous, the idea that one can talk one’s way through a mortification like this. To take the podium and subject oneself to hostile questioning under those circumstances bespoke a delusionary chutzpah.

[Nonsense. It started with Bill Clinton, who committed perjury and obstruction of justice while President and refused to resign or offer anything more than a terse apology, followed by a lot of critic-blaming for his own unfitness. And it worked, too — Clinton regained his popularity as his allies rallied around him for his willingness to “fight” for their causes, and remained wildly popular with his party until his Jeffrey Epstein connections and the Harvey Weinstein scandal combined to take some of the shine off his legacy. Wood wants to discuss Trump as the apotheosis of his argument, but Clinton got there a generation ahead of Trump or Weiner and stuck a stake through the heart of the value of character as a consideration for public office. — Ed]