When Character Mattered in Washington – WSJ

Low and seedy are the corruptions of which Messrs. Trump and Biden have been accused: molesting women, entering into dubious financial dealings with foreign corporations and governments, cavalierly mishandling important documents, and more. Yet both men have been leaders of the free world, as the old saying had it, and both men want another go at it. Worse yet, as things currently stand, one or the other is likely to be successful. Little wonder that in most opinion polls a strong majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.

Is there any way to get these two bozos off the national stage? Neither political party seems ready or willing to do so. The party that prides itself on probity and family values is likely to be represented by a man found liable for sexual abuse, while the party that prides itself on fairness and social justice by a man whose son has allegedly siphoned off millions from the sale of political influence that he may have shared with his father. The probable choices of Messrs. Trump and Biden reveal that the chief interest of both parties is to win and move on to power. Neither seems the least interested in character.

That ideal seems to have departed with the end of WASP culture, beginning sometime in the 1960s. As I wrote in these pages in 2013, whatever that culture s shortcomings a tolerance of quotas in many aspects of life, a want of imagination, a lack of interest in innovation corruption, scandal, incompetence in high places were not, as now, regular features of public life. The result was that stability, solidity, gravity, a certain weight and aura of seriousness suffused public life.

via www.wsj.com

You have to go back to Truman to get to the apparently good guys. I say “apparently” because most of them weren’t really very good.