In Debilis Anatina, Veritas

     Forgive an old Latin scholar, Gentle Reader. The above translates – admittedly, a bit roughly – to “In lame duck, truth.” Replace debilis anatina with vino and you’ll get the reference. (Send your royalty payments to Pliny the Elder.)

     Wine, which as far as we know was the Romans’ preferred intoxicant, is known to relax the drinker, to render him expansive and considerably less self-conscious. A few glasses of the stuff and he’ll say things – possibly do things, too – that would never have emerged from his lips had he abstained. Why, a man who’s gone a couple of Chardonnays or Merlots past his proper limit might tell you all manner of things he would never otherwise have revealed...including a few you’d rather he’d kept to himself.

     There’s a certain loosening of the censors that comes from being a lame-duck president, too:

     This week Obama spokesman Josh Earnest bashed Sen. Chuck Schumer, who objected to cuts in counterterrorism funding for New York. Earnest said, in essence, why listen to this fool on anything if he opposed the Iran deal, especially since “most Democrats” were in favor?

     Police Commissioner Bill Bratton noted, accurately, that this was pure politics — the president was punishing New York to get back at Schumer.

     Obama was doing exactly what he accuses Republican members of Congress of doing, calling them “hostage takers . . . [of] the American people.” Except that his rhetoric was about a debate over tax cuts, not Obama’s actual cutting of money needed to keep the nation’s largest city safe.

     It’s been clear for quite some time that Mr. Sharply Creased Pants – still entranced by that pants crease, David Brooks? – is exceedingly low-class. His pettiness and general nastiness have been exposed in innumerable public utterings. He’s consistently promoted his own indulgences and satisfactions over the obligations, Constitutional and ceremonial, of the president. With the Schumer backhanding, a slap not merely at the senator but at New York City, it’s no longer possible for anyone, regardless of political inclination, to pretend The Won is worthy to sit in the Oval Office.

     (An aside: Democrat politicians are almost all whores, though they don’t necessarily wear their prices on sandwich boards. Were this any time other than the eighth year of Obama’s tenure as president, I’d expect Schumer to crawl to the White House on his belly to plead for the restoration of NYC’s anti-terror funding. However, Schumer knows that the next president is almost certain to restore it anyway.)

     Couple this to the snubs of the Thatcher and Scalia funerals, the several derelictions from duty, the systematic disdain shown to the military, the overt racialism, the many high-ticket vacations, the endless rounds of golf, the unnecessary redecorating of the Oval Office, the unending nasty comments thrown out at Republicans and conservatives, and his absolute unwillingness ever to admit an error, and at what portrait do we arrive of president #44? Do you think the Democrats, who have been diminished far worse by Obama’s narcissism and vindictiveness than by all the sins, large and small, of all the Republicans ever to serve as president, will remember The Won fondly?

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     It should go without saying that a nation’s chief of state is the face it presents to other nations, as regards both policy and character. For seven years the United States has been represented by Barack Hussein Obama. Omit for a moment Obama’s foreign policy moves, which have spanned the range from ludicrous to villainous. Consider only the sort of character he’s displayed to the world. Given that alone, is it even imaginable that our international standing would not have sunk to the depths where it languishes today?

     Low character is impossible to conceal or disguise. Low character is an invitation to others to assume tawdry intentions, duplicity in progress, and faithlessness toward supposed allies. Low character invariably draws one to associate with others of low character.

     America’s sufferings from having twice – twice! Ye gods and little fishes! – elected Obama to the presidency should be a warning to us about the consequences of elevating men of low character to high office. Yet given the results from the primaries to date, the nation is about to face a choice between two candidates of demonstrably low character on November 8.

     Given the parade of scoundrels the Democrats have tossed at us since Truman – and Truman himself, despite the hagiography, was no great prize – perhaps their offering should come as no surprise. But over the same period, the Republicans have presented the electorate with acceptably decent men. Some were not great presidents. Some did unwise things with the authority bestowed upon them. Despite all that, it was impossible to believe that they were persons of low character who harbored unworthy intentions.

     But today, the front-runner in the Republican primaries is a bold-as-brass-and-twice-as-crass multiple adulterer who has striven to seize others’ property via eminent domain, who boasts about buying influence with prominent New York politicians, who delights in bullying others through the legal system, who hurls unsubstantiated accusations at his political competitors, who endlessly revises his supposed political convictions, who promotes himself and his talents shamelessly at every opportunity...and who claims to be a Christian.

     Have GOP voters gone insane? Have we learned nothing from the Obama Interregnum? Aren’t we at all tired of having an unprincipled, power-obsessed clown in the White House? And that’s to say nothing of Donald Trump’s decades of unconcealed support for Democratic politicians, proposals, and policy postures...some of which (e.g., ObamaCare) continues to this day.

     I’ve feared for my country for quite a long time now. Should the Republican presidential nomination go to Trump, the time for fear will have passed. It will be time to mourn.

     Pray, Gentle Reader.