2017 and the End of Ethics

[Geee]

National Review:

Will there be a scandal if the new political appointees at the IRS sic their auditors on Moveon.org? What will the Washington Post say should the new president keep Guantanamo Bay open for five more years, quadruple the number of drone missions, or decide to double renditions? Will it say that he was shredding the Constitution, or that he found the terror threat too great to honor past promises?

 

Will NPR run an exposé on our next president should she tap into Angela Merkel’s cell phone, or monitor the communications of Associated Press reporters — and their parents? Will investigative reporters go after the president should he falsely claim that an ambassador and three other U.S. personnel died in the Middle East during a video-sparked spontaneous riot? Or if he then jails the filmmaker for a year on a trumped-up parole-violation charge?

[Valin]

@Geee

 

A Good Question

 

From Victor Davis Hanson, on how the precedents Obama has set could result in a changed America even after he leaves office:

 

So we are living in scary times. The nation has grown used to the idea that what the president says is probably either untrue or irrelevant and yet it does not really any more care which.

 

The people also assume that it doesnt matter if our pundits talk of the person in the White House as a messiah who prompts tingling legs, or if they take notice of perfect pant-leg creases, or, of course, if they declare that he is the smartest president ever.

 

The result, in the Age of Obama, is a deeply rooted cynicism that works out something like the following: The president of the United States is now an iconic figure and thus cannot be held to the minimal standards of veracity demanded of other Americans. The press is an advocate of his agenda and picks and chooses which scandals can be half-heartedly pursued without endangering their shared vision.

 

How could the media possibly repair its sullied reputation without appearing abjectly hypocritical or artificially zealous? How can the next president resist assuming the extra-constitutional prerogatives of the current one?

Im not so sure that people have become quite as blasé as all that. Also, it wouldnt be such a bad thing if distrust of a president leads to less willingness in the future to turn power over to the central government. But what Hanson is saying is that the combination of this distrust, an acceptance of it, a president willing to abuse his power by extending it in extra-constitutional ways, and a press inclined to give him a pass on his abuses, bodes very ill for the republic.

 

I would like to reassure him on one score, though: if a Republican is elected president, well see the press immediately snap back to its traditional role as critic and gadfly, and this will help shape many peoples perceptions of that president even though some may see it as a hypocritical double standard on the part of the press......(Snip)