\n<\/p>\n
You know which political insult I hate the most?<\/strong> It\u2019s when people talk about \u201cpearl-clutching.\u201d This is a left phenomenon, usually arising relation to someone being shocked by something the speaker finds unshocking. (\u201cSnowflake\u201d has a similar connotation: too sensitive and delicate for the real world; a weakling.) <\/p>\n The image it evokes is so strong and clear: a white woman of a certain age, expensively dressed, her mouth an O of consternation, one hand grasping a long string of pearls to her bosom. It is so sexist and\u2014in being so evocative\u2014so callously determined to cancel the person at whom it is directed. Everyone who uses it ought to made to write \u201cI will never say \u2018pearl-clutching’\u201d 500 times on a cosmic blackboard. <\/p>\n So I\u2019m not going to use that turn of phrase<\/strong> to characterize the Democrats and Democrat-adjacent pundits\u2014liberals and leftists alike\u2014who have condemned President Biden in the strongest terms for pardoning his son Hunter who was convicted of tax evasion and lying when purchasing a gun. I\u2019m just going to ask this: how much doubling down on the double standard can we take?<\/p>\n President Biden is being denounced for having promised during his campaign not to pardon his son, and then doing it<\/strong>. Presumably this is all wrapped up with the emergence of the Republican-manufactured trope, \u201cthe Biden crime family.\u201d They charged without evidence that the President benefited financially from his son\u2019s involvement in Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, and that Hunter Biden used his parentage to influence the US government in Burisma\u2019s favor. <\/p>\n The script condemning Biden goes like this:<\/strong> now that President Biden has broken his promise, using the executive clemency power available to all presidents to keep his son out of prison, the Republicans are absolutely free to lie and pardon with impunity. These commentators are shocked! They thought Biden was an avatar of purity, having lived a life of public service rather than private profit, and that his purity would provide a benchmark, a handy club to beat the Republicans\u2019 corruption and self-dealing. Now all is lost.<\/p>\n What<\/em> is lost?<\/strong> The incoming president used his first-term power to free a raft of malefactors, and other presidents\u2019 clemency choices are well-documented. It remains to be seen how Biden will use his power, but I doubt he can approach Trump\u2019s accomplishments. In Trump\u2019s first term, he pardoned 237 people. You can find the whole list here<\/a>. I\u2019ll just mention Michael Milken, Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D\u2019Souza, and five of his former campaign staff members and political advisers: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Stephen K. Bannon, and George Papadopoulos, along with a slew of court-martialed military officers and members of Congress convicted of crimes. <\/p>\n Barack Obama granted executive clemency to nearly 2,000 individuals<\/a>, mostly commuting disproportionate sentences given at the height of the \u201cwar on drugs.\u201d Bill Clinton pardoned 456 individuals<\/a>, including his brother Roger for an impressive array of minor and major crimes. <\/p>\n Yet according to his sanctimonious critics, Biden has single-handedly obliterated propriety in government by pardoning his son.<\/strong> <\/p>\n I doubt this would annoy me quite so much if it weren\u2019t of a piece with a particularly fantastic idea popular among Democratic politicians<\/strong>, that they have a responsibility to uphold by their conduct the honor of institutions that many see as having been dishonored long ago. For instance, I keep hearing Democratic politicians worry the question of whether they should actively oppose Trump\u2019s long list of dangerously absurd appointees to Cabinet posts and other high offices, or reserve their comments and hard questions for a chosen few of the worst so as not to undermine the process by protesting too much.<\/p>\n This is so deeply self-regarding and indifferent to the public good that I can barely stand to write about it<\/strong>. Let\u2019s translate it into language that fits the puerile thinking behind this dilemma: \u201cIf I stand up to everyone who\u2019s hurting others, the popular kids will like me even less than they do now, and everyone else will think I\u2019m an asshole.\u201d The Republicans have vigorously opposed and attempted to discredit every Democratic appointee for years. There is no solid foundation of civility and bipartisanship in Congress today. The villains and toadies on Trump\u2019s list of nominees are nicely described in Frank Bruni\u2019s recent column<\/a>. If the Democrats decide to oppose the violently right-wing sexual abuser, financial criminal, and obnoxious public drunkard Pete Hegseth, who has made his plans for the military crystal clear, trading that for giving the bootlicking fascist Kash Patel the FBI to deploy as a tool of Trump\u2019s retribution, how will Democrats explain the importance of politesse to the good people on Trump\u2019s enemies list who are dragged off to prison?<\/p>\n Double standards come in many flavors<\/strong>. Heading today\u2019s list is widespread belief in Trump\u2019s 2016 assertion that \u201cI could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn\u2019t lose voters,\u201d versus seemingly intelligent pundits\u2019 bemoaning civility\u2019s death at Biden\u2019s hands for the crime of pardoning his son. It has somehow been normalized that Democrats are naturally held to a higher standard than Republicans, and are naturally chastised for any misstep while the MAGA crowd continues to face surprisingly few meaningful obstacles to its rampage against good government. It has somehow become normalized that a gang of reprobates and hoodlums be given the keys to the kingdom because to tell the truth about all of them would be impolite. <\/p>\n My head is spinning. <\/strong><\/p>\n I think about all the ways that double standards persist, all the damage they do<\/strong>. A famous cartoon points out that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in heels. Countless women have said that they need to be more competent, composed, and conciliatory than men to attain anything like the same position. Olivia Pope was the main character in the TV series Scandal<\/em>, about wheeling and dealing in Washington. Her character\u2019s father tells her something I have never heard contested, \u201cAs a black woman, you will have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have.\u201d <\/p>\n All these double standards are hugely messed up<\/strong>, and constantly chipped away at by those with determination, persistence, and care. These double standards haven\u2019t been erased, to be sure. But there is progress. I wish I could point to comparable care when the stakes involve our commonwealth, when they necessitate fighting massive amounts of corruption and cruelty, engaging enormous challenges to human rights, human dignity, public accountability, and the well-being of the body politic. The MAGA foxes are being put in charge of the henhouse, and way too many of the chickens are clucking in a corner about the temerity of one of their number who was rude to the foxes. <\/p>\n I hope that there are enough public officials and opinion-makers of integrity left standing to take the only honorable path here<\/strong>. It doesn\u2019t have anything to do with the sanctity of institutions. Each and every one of Trump\u2019s appointees should be opposed with every tool that can be mustered, every time. Executive clemency should be used to save the courageous public servants Trump has promised to prosecute for the crime of opposing him.<\/p>\n I used to regularly include three questions in my writing:<\/p>\n Who are we as a people? Please, please, not as those who sacrificed all to defend a fantasy of civility and bipartisanship while Washington burned. <\/p>\n Cat Power, \u201cIt\u2019s All Over Now, Baby Blue.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n
What do we stand for?
How do we want to be remembered?<\/p>\n