After his nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016, Merrick Garland, according to the New York Times, assured senators that he doesn’t have “a political bone” in his body. This seems to be true, unfortunately.
His current job as attorney general inevitably involves making judgments that are inherently political. It involves the exercise of discretion about when to exercise government power and for what purposes. Moreover, the best quality of politics at its best is prudence: fitting orderly principles to messy realities. This requires making judgments that balance competing goals.
When it comes to this week’s events in Palm Beach, Florida, the rule of law is of course important. But so are other things, including social courtesy and — consult the preamble to the Constitution — domestic tranquility. No value ever eclipses all others. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum — let justice be done, even if the sky falls? we don’t
As of this writing Thursday morning, there are significant unanswered questions about who instigated the Mar-a-Lago search and why. One remarkable aspect of this debacle, however, is that the vigorous disgust doesn’t have to wait until we know these answers: try to imagine a justification for this extravagant exercise in… what? Law enforcement? What was important enough to boil over the already simmering suspicions of tens of millions of Americans about the tentacles of the “deep state” engaged in partisan sculpting?
Get ready for a glut of “what lies” from people who were already wary of selective law enforcement and situational journalistic ethics. When the Clintons left the White House in January 2001, they fled with some furniture they were forced to gut, without the FBI swarming their home. Hillary Clinton’s subsequent mishandling of classified documents triggered the FBI exception, but not a law enforcement spectacle like Monday’s.
One adjective describes most of life’s biggest mistakes: “blown out of proportion.” The authors of this week’s circus must have felt that their target is likely to be a presidential candidate again soon. Just as sure, they didn’t care. But facts are stubborn things, including this: In 2020, after watching Donald Trump govern for four years, 74,222,958 Americans — 11,237,852 more than voted for him in 2016 — decided they wanted four years more than him. This can be regretted but should not be ignored.
The great and the good, aka the Democratic Party in its vanity, gave us President Trump awarding his 2016 presidential nomination to someone who could manage to lose to the star of “Access Hollywood.” Now, the Justice Department of a Democratic administration has succeeded in reversing the fading of that artist whose act is obsolete. With his wild cunning, Trump instantly sensed that his home search was a gift that will keep on giving by fueling the animosities of his supporters and his donation.
Trump may have broken laws regarding presidential documents. So cue those who believe that “No man is above the law” is a thought that makes it unnecessary to think any further. However, spot-on enforcement of all laws, no matter how complex the social context, is zombie governance by people who choose bromides to avoid making complex judgments.
In one way, this week’s behavior by the FBI and the Justice Department was not unusual, unfortunately. Hardly a day goes by without some government entity claiming historian Robert Conquest’s axiom: “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”
Remember the guy with the Pop-Tart gun? The 7-year-old chewed his gun-shaped pastry and said “Bang! Bang!”, so his school suspended him and urged all parents to talk about the “incident”. Remember the 5-year-old girl who was labeled a “terrorist threat” and ordered to undergo a psych evaluation because she talked about shooting people with her bubble-shooting Hello Kitty gun? How did we get to this point where so many adults are afraid to play the role of practicing prudence?
This nation is running out of an indispensable ingredient for a successful society: trust, in institutions and in others. This week was another leftover. Garland has said of the Justice Department, “We will, and we have to talk to our work.” In fact, their political duty is to explain and justify their work.
Hamlet did not want his capacity for action to be “sick by the pale part of thought.” If only the Justice Department were more inclined to be inhibited by thought.
