{Originally posted to the Commentary Magazine website}
As the nation reacted to a leaked “Access Hollywood” tape, Donald Trump reminded us that hypocrisy is a bipartisan affliction. Both Democratic outrage and the willingness of Republicans to excuse and rationalize their decision to stand behind him after Trump’s boasts of actions that are indistinguishable from sexual assault are a reflection of the deep cynicism as well as the hyper-partisanship that have done so much damage to our political culture.
The tape didn’t tell us anything about Donald Trump that we didn’t already know. Anyone who has followed his very public career over the last 30 years already knew he was a vile, vulgar man with a history of inappropriate conduct that ought to disqualify him for high office. Despite the shock it has generated, the notion that he was a sexual predator is no more surprising than the latest Russian-inspired leaks about Hillary Clinton that show she is a two-faced liar about trade and “open borders.” What’s interesting about the furor over the tape is that it shows how unprincipled so many of us are when it comes to politics. While Trump’s attempt to change the subject by talking about Bill Clinton’s behavior is no defense of his own conduct, those who raise that subject are right to the extent that it shows that most Democrats are hypocrites. It was only 18 years ago that liberals were telling us to “move on” from any discussion about the 42nd president’s behavior, which included proven instances of sexual harassment, not to mention Juanita Broaddrick’s accusation that Clinton raped her. Democrats told us then that this was “just sex” and an attempt to deflect the country from important issues. The Republican drive to impeach Clinton, which was technically about perjury but perceived by the country as an inquisition of his personal conduct was denounced as sexual prudery by much of the same liberal mainstream media and political establishment that currently wants to burn Trump at the stake. But Democrats aren’t the only hypocrites nor are they the most egregious examples of those who have adjusted their moral compass to suit the needs of their party.
Clinton’s impeachment trial may have been about perjury, but conservative commentary about his scandals was not limited to the question of lying. William Bennett spoke for many if not most conservatives when he wrote in his 1999 book The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals, that something more important was at stake in the debate about Clinton’s indiscretions. Bennett demolished the idea that “private misdeeds” had no impact on a leader’s ability to govern or on society as a whole. To the contrary, he reminded us that toleration of immorality undermined the very fabric of our political system because democracy simply doesn’t work without a belief in virtue.
Yet sadly, Bennett and many others on the right—including those who specifically present themselves to the public as religious conservatives—no longer seem to think virtue is a prerequisite for the presidency. Just as Clinton’s defenders decided that anything he did could be defended no matter how repugnant because the alternative meant granting victory to their Republican foes, conservatives have made the same immoral calculus in sticking with Trump.
They argue, not without some justification, that ditching Trump means abandoning the field to Hillary Clinton with incalculable consequences for the future of religious liberty and other key issues. But the price they are paying for their loyalty to Trump is higher than they seem to realize. The Democrats’ hypocrisy about Clinton and Trump is appalling, but their views were always rooted in the sort of situational ethics and moral relativism that is at the heart of the liberal worldview. Conservatives were supposed to be standing for something bigger than just what’s good for the Republican Party at any given moment. The case for conservatism as not merely arguments about fiscal sanity or foreign policy but also public virtue and constitutional principles is being undermined by the willingness of so many people to toss away their principles because of their abhorrence of Clinton. That many of these same people who spoke about the impact of the death of outrage with regard to Clinton are now willing to rationalize Trump’s egregious behavior makes their hypocrisy even worse than that of their liberal counterparts.
That moral collapse is made all the more egregious because Trump’s already minimal chances of victory in November evaporated in the last two weeks. If they were honest conservatives already knew that Trump is no conservative and likely to break most, if not all of his promises to them. That gave the lie to the urgency of their “Flight 93 election” arguments in which the choice was presented as a flawed billionaire or a liberal apocalypse. But the lesser of two evils talking point is now theoretical rather than reflecting a realistic option. The only things left for conservatives to defend in 2016 are their endangered Congressional majorities and their integrity. It remains to be seen whether enough Republicans can sufficiently distance themselves from Trump to hold on to their seats. But what is certain is that any conservative that sticks with him will be illustrating how the debate about the death of outrage and the assault on American ideals has come full circle with a vengeance.
