Mitch McConnell’s sudden emergence as a defender of presidential-conduct norms is absurd. jonathanchait writes
Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images On Friday, President Obama told a private call of his former aides that President Trump had mismanaged the pandemic and that his efforts to undo Michael Flynn’s guilty plea threatened the rule of law. On Sunday, President Trump retweeted an accusation that President Obama was “the first Ex-President to ever speak against his successor, which was long tradition of decorum and decency.
McConnell has spent years sitting idly by while Trump has shredded norms of presidential conduct. And not just issues of superficial manners — important democratic norms like “don’t encourage your supporters to commit political violence” and “don’t threaten to imprison your rivals,” among many others. McConnell’s sudden emergence as defender of presidential-conduct norms is absurd.
To the extent it exists, the tradition of withholding criticism of a successor is a very recent one, primarily associated with the two Presidents Bush, both of whom made a big point of refusing to criticize the presidents who followed them. But this decision had a clear strategic element: Both Bushes left office deeply unpopular. Their fellow Republicans devoutly wished for them to disappear and saw their engagement in public debate as a liability.
Neither did the fact that Trump has attacked Obama hundreds of times, often hysterically, and sometimes including spurious charges of criminality. At minimum, this would seem to obviate any requirement that Obama keep his silence. McConnell has the extraordinary chutzpah to witness the president spending years lying about his predecessor and setting the stage to criminalize him, and to then get indignant at the predecessor for calling this a threat to the rule of law in private remarks.
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