Opinion

Dems Want To Get To the Bottom Of Things, But Might Just Hit Bottom First

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
Font Size:

When we’re three years into Donald Trump’s presidency and special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the Trump’s golf courses, we will wonder how this exercise in fustration was ever conceived. This would clearly be a comedy of errors if it were not so potentially tragic.

Don’t laugh — not yet anyway. Remember how it worked for Bill Clinton when an Ken Starr started out looking at Whitewater real estate and ended up studying a soiled dress owned by Monica Lewinsky? People forget that the House did finally impeach Clinton for his scandalous ways though the process was never finalized by the Senate.

Does it strike no one as ironic that Hillary Clinton emerged unscathed from her sordid years as secretary of state, was assured by Trump that he did not intend to pursue a vindictive path of revenge when he became president yet it is Trump who is now under investigation for — for what? Oh yes, that’s the most significant piece of the puzzle that has yet to be identified by any of the players in this drawing room tragedy: a crime of any sort.

We keep hearing about collusion and it is now as much an overused word in the post-election period as “pivot” was in the election cycle. It is fine for Trump’s surrogates to find some silver lining in this mess but it is difficult to take seriously any suggestion that this special counsel development is somehow “good news” for the president as he can now justifiably say nothing when asked about how Russia interfered in the U.S. with the express purpose of having Donald Trump elected. It is never good news to have the national media and opposition Democrats presenting all Russia all the time. We can only hope their obsession will inevitably lead to some sort of collective indigestion: at the very mention of words like “Russia,” or “collusion” we will also emit a shared wretching and have to run to the nearest restroom.

There was a famous moment in the life of Senator Joe McCarthy, who was also able to use the spectre of Russia as a means of carving himself a considerable degree of political fame that grew to enormous proportions before imploding under the weight of his escalating rhetoric and accusations. When McCarthy was investigating the U.S. Army for alleged communist influence, he essentially crossed a point of no political return. Not only did President Dwight Einsenhower think the senator had journeyed too far into sacred territory, McCarthy had the deserved bad luck to face-off against the Army’s chief counsel, Joseph Welch, who mortally wounded the increasingly alcoholic politician with the question, “Have you no sense of decency, sir — at long last?”

Will there be such a defining moment in this latest obsession with the allegedly all-encompassing reach of Russian influence? Perhaps not, if only because the current anti-Russian mania is not personified by one political figure but is share by the host of talking head Democrats — all of whom express some desire to “get to the bottom of things,” in much the same way as Larry Mondello’s mother used to say on the old Leave It to Beaver sitcom. The Dems might not get to the bottom before they hit bottom.

Which allows me to transition to another happy television moment. It has been a difficult spring for fans of Fox News. They conservative news station seems to be in a perennial state of flux and program reorganization — with the last latest casualty on Friday being The Five’s token Democrat Bob Beckel. But with the loss of  Bill O’Reilly and The Factor, we have also been deprived of the peculiarly brilliant and uproariously relevant comedic talents of actor Dennis Miller, who was a regular guest on O’Reilly’s show. Well I see that Turner Classic Movies has been utilizing Miller’s particular brand of commentary this month on Thursday nights as he hosts a celebration of monster movies from the 1950s. What makes these films so ideologically welcoming is the complete lack of moral relativism in the movies and their profound sense of America’s moral purpose.

If you think America needs to rediscover that sense of moral purpose and your are beginning to doubt that Trump is the leader who can achieve it, think Hillary. Think Benghazi. Think private email server.

It is time to stop cowering from the imagined powers of the Russians and start making America great again.

Follow David on Twitter.