Not indictable is the new white

The President is not indictable for obstruction of justice because his guilt cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Nor did the Special Counsel find evidence of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. President Trump and his fans are touting these claims of his recently appointed Attorney General as proof that media coverage has been biased and even that the investigation itself was illegal. There is far less evidence of either of those claims than the conclusions the Attorney General came to.

Trump’s signal accomplishment in American life is to lower standards in many different spheres. Elected as a member of the political party that always claimed to want to rein in government spending, Trump has accelerated the accumulation of US debt to over $1 trillion per year. His deregulation of many industries amounts to lowering standards for everything from cars and power plants to light bulbs. His refusal to make his tax returns public and his hesitation to fire abusive cabinet members has lowered ethical standards throughout the US government. In the military sphere, the lowering of criteria for the use of drones has led to a marked increase in collateral deaths of civilians, causing the Administration to end announcement of casualty figures.

We should have expected this. Trump did the same in his business and private life. He has notoriously low standards for his treatment of women: he not only brags about his physical abuse of them but pays hush money to conceal his flings. None of his three marriages have been successful. His commercial products and real estate developments are more glitzy than quality. As a casino magnate, he became more expert in bankruptcy than in enterprise. He falsified financial statements to get loans and insurance reimbursements. He used a charitable foundation for his own private purposes. He refused to rent apartments to black people, imported immigrants rather than higher US citizens, and allowed undocumented workers to staff his golf clubs.

In foreign policy, Trump has befriended unreliable dictators and scorned well-tested allies. He withdrew from the Iran deal that imposed tight restrictions on Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and accepted a watered-down version of a denuclearization pledge from North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Trump has accepted Russian President Putin’s simple denial of interference in the US election over the ample evidence the US intelligence and law enforcement communities have produced. He likewise prefers to believe unsubstantiated Saudi denials of Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi rather than the intelligence community’s conclusions. On climate change, the President prefers the advice of ideologues to that of serious scientists.

The flim-flam extends also to Special Counsel Mueller’s report. Attorney General Barr is stalling on publishing its contents, hoping that the interval will provide enough time and opportunity for him and the White House to convince Americans that their version of the report is accurate. This will certainly work with Republicans, who remain not only loyal but enthusiastic about a president who lies blatantly every day. It won’t work with Democrats, who are determined to rid the country of the flim-flam man as soon as they can. The key question is independent voters: will they tire of this embarrassment, or will they decide we need to do better?

The issue is likely to be decided only on November 3, 2020, when Americans again go to the polls. Impeachment isn’t likely unless some new malfeasance appears on the political horizon. Trump will run again, because once out of office he will be subject to criminal prosecution in New York for his financial abuses. The Democrats will need to produce not only a sterling candidate, but one who can win by more than the 3 million votes Hillary Clinton beat Trump by, because his support is ideally distributed to gain votes in the Electoral College even if he loses the popular vote. The big factor in determining the popular vote margin will be the economy: if it is still expanding, even more slowly, in November next year Trump has far better chances than if, as most economists are anticipating, the economy falls into recession.

In the meanwhile, we’ll need to live with lowered standards. Trump’s 40% support is solid. Non-indictable is the new white.